Rating: 
Summary: Educated musings about everything and nothing....
Review: It is always a pleasure to be in a company of an educated person, with diverse and informed opinions, to freely float from topic to topic, to loop and return, to bask in the light of human knowledge. But it is NOT enough for the book. This book suffers the major flaw of an attempt to preserve a good conversation. For the book an author needs a vision, a goal, a revelation, an urge to write it for posterity. This book lacks these requirements, it is just educated musings about everything and nothing. You can not learn much about neither Talmud, nor Internet, it leaves you with an aftertaste of two hours seriously misspent, perplexed at the question why Mr. Rosen even decided to write it. Is it his first public step back to Jewish tradition? Such things are more believable if done privately. Is it a praise for ubiquitous Internet? Too obvious. I would wish for the author to try to write another novel, "Eve's Apple" had a promise, it prompted this reviewer to read " Talmud and Internet". Alas, a major dissapointment!
Rating: 
Summary: Only Connect
Review: Jonathan Rosen, who enjoys virtual reality on the Internet, has written a fetching introduction to the Talmud. Less informed critics (usually people who have not studied this incomparable work of scholarship) have given the word talmudic the connotation of "differentiating to the point of absurdity." Rosen convinces us otherwise. He finds in the Talmud the key to living with the multiple worlds he has inherited, with an assist from the Internet. Deeply grounded in the great works of Western culture, Rosen seeks to keep in his head the voices of John Donne, Homer, John Milton, Henry Adams, Blake .... From the model of the Talmud Rosen derives his model for accepting side by side realities. In this model science and technology do not destroy faith. The universal longings expressed in the medieval Chartres Cathedral can evoke awe in a Jew who keeps the memory of the Crusaders of the same medieval period who, on their way to the Holy Land, plunged into wholesale murder of Jews in the Rhineland and in France. Rosen tells tales. There are memorable stories that exemplify Talmudic wisdom. There is, also, the story of Henry Adams's faith becoming overwhelmed by the awesome power of the dynamo (electricity). And the tale of Josephus, the turncoat Jewish historian of the Roman period who left us a vivid account of the decisive moment in Jewish history: the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Best of all is the story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the creative genius who started the process that became the Talmud as the ashes of the Second Temple still smoldered. Starting with Rabbi Yochanan's circle of scholars, the Talmud was 1500 years in the making. The last addition to its pages is the work of a 16th century scholar. Arguments and counter-arguments are the essence of Talmudic discourse. Rabbis argue with each other across the centuries. Rabbi Yochanan created the Talmud to repair a broken Jewish world, deprived of the central focus of its religious rituals, the Temple. In Rosen's thought, the Internet too has emerged in a broken world. He sees the Internet both as mirror of a broken world--in its disjointedness--and as offering "a kind of disjointed harmony." Since the establishment of the Talmudic academies in the first millenium, rabbis have answered questions that come from afar through "responsa", utilizing whatever communication network existed, usually depending on Jewish traders on camel or ship. To me "responsa" appear to have an unexpected parallel in the exchange of information between individuals that is made possible by the Internet.
Rating:
Summary: Eloquent glimpse into a Jewish soul
Review: Mr. Rosen shows us in this well written short book the difficulties of what it means for him to be Jewish. Two grandmothers dominate his inner life. One, on the maternal side, born in America, thoroughly assimilated, who died at a ripe old age in the midst of her family. The other, whom he never knew, had lived in Vienna and had become a victim of the Nazis murderous fury. Rosen's father experienced Hitler's invasion of Austria as a thirteen year old boy and was fortunate to have been sent with one of the "Kindertransporte" to Scotland and eventually came to America. The father's family perished during the war as part of the Holocaust. Thus Rosen tries to come to terms with these conflicting fates which still haunt him.
His family epitomizes the Jewish dilemna of belonging, but not quite. America with its material benefits is felt as a blessing. At the same time it is not truly "home" because part of Rosen's soul is still in the Poland of his grandmother's ancestors, as experienced in the study of the Talmud. As the title of the book indicates Rosen tries to make a connection between the material and the spiritual aspects of his heritage and he has done so quite convincingly. He also gives the non-Jewish reader an inkling of why the Talmud is relevant for today's Judaism.
Rosen points out that it is the Jewish New Testament. But in Judaism it is not the "word" which became "flesh," but the "flesh" became "word." This happened when Jochanan ben Zakkai had himself smuggled out in a coffin from beleaguered Jerusalem. With Roman permission he then founded the Yeshiva at Yavneh and thus became the father of rabbinic Judaism as we know it today. The consequences of this inversion of terms are actually enormous and I leave it to the reader to ponder them.
Let me just point out that the Talmud is not a book but an encyclopedia which consists of many volumes. It contains widely differing opinions on Jewish law, legends, moral exhortations, and day to day advice on the most diverse subjects. It is as disjointed as the Internet and similar to the Internet you can find almost everything you want but it surely takes patience to locate the needle in the haystack.
Nevertheless this is, as far as I am concerned, not really the Talmud's major importance for the Gentile world. It is rather the fact that Law even if it is divinely ordained through Moses in the Pentateuch, can and should be disputed. Dissent is encouraged. Arguments are held over words and sentences which are given meanings which are totally different from what one would expect Moses had intended. This attitude that "everything is negotiable," which does not stop at the doors of the synagogue and the word of God, makes Judaism profoundly different from all the other great religions of the world. It is this "talmudic thinking" which has invaded America's culture. Whether or not this has been of benefit to society at large each one of us has to decide in his/her own mind. While the Talmud may provide solace for some it also perpetuates an "us versus them" attitude and as longs as this mental framework exists Rosen's newborn daughter will inherit a world which will continue to be torn by strife.
Rating:
Summary: a Talmud for the rest of us
Review: No, Rosen is not really trying to explain the Talmud to us Gentiles, and he would only deserve a grade of "C+" if this were his meager attempt to demonstrate some heuristic connection between the Talmud and the Internet. Fortunately, neither is the case here. Rosen is grappling with the same angst, sadness, and threatening unsettledness that all of us encounter with that first realization of finitude when confronted with the loss of a close friend or family member. His descriptions of these first-time feelings and fears are vivid and grounded in real life everyday people, places, and things. The outside possibility of lost hope in all our lives is material enough for a genuine horror story. Fortunately, the book is short, the reading is easy, and the ending is worth waiting for. Rosen makes magnificent use of the Talmud and the Internet to weave a tale that can't help but touch the most hardened heart - even a techno-challenged Gentile like myself!
Rating: 
Summary: Turn it, Turn it, for everything is in it. Talmud or Cyber?
Review: Over 2000 years ago (after 586 BCE), Jewish life in its land was destroyed, and sacrifices were no longer carried out; there were no high priests. Instead, the Jews wrote the Talmud, and the Jewish people were transformed into a dispossessed, portable, evolving, People of the Book. The Talmud was born out of loss, just as Rosen was born a son of a Kindertransport survivor. The Internet, Rosen writes, has made us both feel dispossessed, for it has exiled us from that which with we are familiar, yet it has made us more connected than ever -- Connected, just as a reader of Talmud feels connected to the rabbis and commentators from generations passed. Rosen asks, what will we evolve into in the new internet culture? Will the synagogue be replaced by computer servers? As it is written in Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers), "turn it, turn it, for everything is in it." Were they talking about the Internet or the Talmud? Rosen writes, "Not long after my grandmother died, my computer crashed and I lost the journal I had kept of her dying." But do the deaths of people or hard drives mean that lives or data are actually lost? What can be recovered? Is there a Norton Utilities Unerase utility for your memories of your loved ones? How do you TOGGLE between the Internet of modern technology and the demands and pulls of The Talmud of religious order. (or how does one create a marriage between a culture editor and a rabbi?) Just as he compares the choices and legacies of Josephus and Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rosen compares the fortunate life of his American-born, pragmatic grandmother, with baked apple skin, who lived to be nearly 95, craving pastrami before her throat surgery in a modern hospital, to the life of his European-born grandmother who was shot and murdered by Nazis. The "Talmud and the Internet" explores the contradictions of Rosen's inheritance (religious and pragmatic). Do we create our religion or only inherit it? Rosen chronicles the remarkable parallels between a page of Talmud and the home page of a Web site, with hyperlinks across the generations and worlds. For example, did you know that the word for Talmud pages is webbings? Or that the Talmud is compared to the Sea (as in surfing)? Didn't a rabbi once write that everything is in the Talmud, and don't people believe that the whole world is in the Internet also? Rosen charts the territory between doubt and belief, tragedy and prosperity, the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Rating:
Summary: The Talmud & the Internet is a lyrical meditation balance.
Review: The Talmud and the Internet is all about nothing ever being lost & about losing The Temple in the War against the Roman Empire; about Rabbinic stories & Internet sites; marriage & death; about connections to the past & thinking of the future. It is an astonishing read filled with the stories that make up Jonathan Rosen & his beloved wife. It starts out as his maternal grandmother, a sturdy 95 year old suddenly dies & how, soon afterwards when his computer crashes, the journal he had been keeping was lost. It ends up with the author pondering on the heritage which his soon-to-born daughter will inherit. In between, this thin little book travels far back to the Destruction of the Second Temple & Flavius Josephus' record of that time. About a rabbi who chose life rather than death. About a great American thinker & his anti-Semitic bent; about this author's other grandmother who was murdered by the Nazis & his father who was rescued. This is an amazing exploration of living Divine expectations, seeking a life of balance. It is certainly a keeper & a super idea for a gift! ...
Rating:
Summary: The Talmud & the Internet is a lyrical meditation balance.
Review: The Talmud and the Internet is all about nothing ever being lost & about losing The Temple in the War against the Roman Empire; about Rabbinic stories & Internet sites; marriage & death; about connections to the past & thinking of the future. It is an astonishing read filled with the stories that make up Jonathan Rosen & his beloved wife. It starts out as his maternal grandmother, a sturdy 95 year old suddenly dies & how, soon afterwards when his computer crashes, the journal he had been keeping was lost. It ends up with the author pondering on the heritage which his soon-to-born daughter will inherit. In between, this thin little book travels far back to the Destruction of the Second Temple & Flavius Josephus' record of that time. About a rabbi who chose life rather than death. About a great American thinker & his anti-Semitic bent; about this author's other grandmother who was murdered by the Nazis & his father who was rescued. This is an amazing exploration of living Divine expectations, seeking a life of balance. It is certainly a keeper & a super idea for a gift! ...
Rating:
Summary: Rosen and his grandmas
Review: The title is a little misleading. This book doesn't have all that much to do with the internet (Rosen uses it as a point of departure and a point of reference, but I guess I think his analogy can only go so far). But it is a very nice quasi-memoir. Rosen ponders the different experiences and natures of his two grandmothers, one born in America and the benefitiary of a comfortable American upbringing, the other an immigrant and refugee. It's a nice read.
Rating:
Summary: Rosen and his grandmas
Review: The title is a little misleading. This book doesn't have all that much to do with the internet (Rosen uses it as a point of departure and a point of reference, but I guess I think his analogy can only go so far). But it is a very nice quasi-memoir. Rosen ponders the different experiences and natures of his two grandmothers, one born in America and the benefitiary of a comfortable American upbringing, the other an immigrant and refugee. It's a nice read.
Rating:
Summary: Unformed and void
Review: This book titles itself "The Talmud and the Internet." It says next to nothing about either subject. The author has a single compelling insight: The Talmud's development and typographical layout predated Hypertext in establishing a non-linear format for the contemporaneous presentation of information from various sources on a page. One does not read Talmudic text sequentially but hops back and forth between primary sources and commentaries much as one navigates the Web. The author proceeds to abandon his thesis entirely around page 14 and instead writes a book about himself and his family history, an appallingly high proportion of which will interest nobody except the author's immediate descendants. I defy anyone to surmise on the basis of the sentences opening five of the book's six chapters that this is a book about anything Talmudic: "Not long after my grandmother died, my computer crashed. . . ." (Ch. I) / "When I was about eight years old. . . ." (Ch. III) / "My father once told me that when he was a boy. . . ." (Ch. IV) / "My first year as a graduate student in English literature. . . ." (Ch. V) / "A few years ago my wife and I spent the summer in Scotland." (Ch. VI) These are well-representative of the book's content, which also includes self-indulgent reminiscences about the author's vacation with an ex-girlfriend, his frustration with an opera record, his love of Christmas carols, his wife's ultrasound, et cetera, ad naseam. References to the Talmud are mostly limited to summaries of a handful of the most well-known stories, such as R. Hillel's definition of Torah as the golden rule (while "the rest is commentary") and R. Eliezer's effort to marshal first a carob tree and ultimately heaven itself in support of his dissenting opinion in a hallachic quarrel. In contradistinction to both a Talmudic page and a web page, however, readers are unable to follow this text in the direction of any illuminating history or insightful commentary.
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