Some Shavuos Reading/Sources

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think it is always worth a reminder that the Torah describes the holiday of Shavuos as a time to thank God for the harvest, even if today we refer to it as the holiday of the Torah. Be that as it may, we do celebrate it today as “the time of the giving of our Torah,” and so even though I don’t have time to write all this out, I wanted to share a sourcesheet and essay on one of my favorite ideas relating to the transmitting of Torah: how the medium of transmission affects the actual message or content of the Torah that is being transmitted.

The most direct example from rabbinic literature is the difference between the Written Torah, that must be taught from a text, vs. the Oral Torah that must be taught by word of mouth (source #0-2). Each method of transmission has pros and cons, and there are few rabbinic sources that discuss the advantages of maintaining either a written (#3-6) or oral (#7-11) torah. But the different possible media is not limited to just books vs. a human teacher—there are many variations on each, and the different ways that the rabbis have thought about these types of media can be instructive for how we think about more modern possibilities of transmitting information.

Throughout the history of Torah transmission, different rabbis have reflected upon how the Torah is affected by, for example, being taught through books instead of human teachers (#9, 13-16, 21), having books that state the halakha instead of having to determine the halakha from the Gemara (#17-18) or living custom (#10-11), and whether that halakha is presented “as-is” or as subject to disputes (#20-21). Some innovations were readily accepted, some were more controversial, and we find rabbinic sources that were very apprehensive about using new technologies (such as the pringting press, #22, or the telephone, #23) even well after their use became widespread. Some of these concerns may be very familiar to us, and some might be less so, but the basic idea is that a lot of these sources have important points to ponder as new media technologies fill the world around us. What do we think about Substack, about blogs, about podcasts, about YouTube and TikTok, about AI chatbots, etc.? I don’t know, but I think these sources can help articulate which factors should be considered before adopting new technologies too readily.

Anyways, here’s the sourcesheet attached below, along with another essay (linked here) that I wrote a few years ago that I think makes for some fun Shavuos reading.