Crowdsourcing July 25 Sermon
For this summer’s sermons, we’d like to incorporate your perspectives. The
clergy will pose a question at the beginning of each week. Your
responses to the question will help inform the sermon for that week.
Please respond to July 25 sermon topic: “Technology itself is neither good nor bad, it is how we use it. How has technology helped to connect you to others and/or how has technology separated you from others?”
BlogRS 
Technology has allowed me the great gift of genealogical research. Knowing about my family history has meant that I’ve been not only been drawn closer to a first cousin who was old enough to be my father and with whom I worked diligently – one who I had barely known because he live in the DC area and my father was not fond of his wife – but I’ve also discovered wonderful relatives far afield (and also some with whom I have very little in common). Without technology this would have been a difficult and time-consuming task and although there will always be more that can be discovered, the search has become a real adventure and I’ve constructed my own TOLEDOT – generations – just like one of the parashiot.
” 50 Shades of Grey ”
no . . No . . NO
NOT the x-rated scandal
50 shades-of-gray :
the x-ray scan
applied worldwide via tele-radiology
to connect the patient’s pathology
toward timely treatment .
As a radiologist , I spent my days and nights interpreting
50 shades-of-gray medical images , and became a link between patient and physician .
Early detection of disease for prompt treatment requires a Need for Speed .
High-tech medical imaging interpretation was my offering .
Eli,
Since I’m addicted to my phone, my wife and I have implemented two things: 1. No screens in the bedroom (other than as alarms or phones only). 2. No screens from 2pm-bedtime Saturday (which we call soul day).
Kindle has been declared as okay, since it doesn’t seem to suck us in nor disconnect us.
My child was diagnosed at an early age with two disabilities neither of which I was familiar with. The internet connected me to other families where we could ask questions, share experiences and vent if need be. I would have been so alone without these listservs and communities.
Most people like to say that technology is neither good nor evil. It is however simultaneously both good an evil. It is intimately connected to the idea of the world to come. Technology and the science that creates it is inherently transformative altering society at the most fundamental levels. It is very rare (if not impossible) for these chances not to have simultaneously both positive and negative consequences. Even something a simple as a vaccine can both cure disease can cause other problems like disease resistant strains, greater gaps between haves and have nots, and overpopulation in parts of the world.
Personally the effect of technology as many have focused on here can make it challenging to find the peace we look for on shabbat. The simple answer is to put the technology away to find the peace we seek. The more difficult answer is to find the peace within the technological world.
I forgot part of my point. When it was written the Torah was cutting edge technology. No longer did stories and messages have to be passed down by memory from parent to child. It was literally a revolution which changed the israelites entire world. It created a new educated class and a new class of disenfranchised, it created unparalleled opportunities for new ideas on every subject imaginable, and it created conflict.