Talmud+the Internet

"Not long after my grandmother died, my computer crashed & I lost the journal I had kept of her dying." So begins this powerful, personal consideration of modern technology & ancient religious impulses by the celebrated young novelist, essayist, & culture editor of the Forward. Jonathan Rosen blends religious history, memoir, & literary reflection as he compares the fortunate life of his American-born grandmother to the life of his European-born grandmother who was murdered by Nazis. The Talmud & the Internet explores the contradictions of Rosen's inheritance & toggles between personal paradoxes & those of the larger world. Along the way, he chronicles the remarkable parallels between a page of Talmud & the home page of a Web site. In the loose, associative logic & the vastness of each, he discovers not merely the disruption of a broken world but a kind of disjointed harmony. In the same way that the Talmud helped Jews survive after the destruction of the Temple by making Jewish culture portable & personal, the all-inclusive Internet serves a world that is both more uprooted & more connected than ever before. In this profound, ultimately hopeful meditation, Rosen charts the territory between doubt & belief, tragedy & prosperity, the world of the living & the world of the dead.Rosen, Jonathan is the author of 'Talmud+the Internet' with ISBN 9780374272388 and ISBN 0374272387.