Digital Judaism

The rise of digital media and its rapid integration into everyday life has transformed the Jewish world on communal and individual levels. Despite objections from rabbis and educators in various communities, most notably the ultra-Orthodox, digital media is increasingly supplementing, and occasionally replacing, traditional ways of practice, ritual, and learning. Thus, the question begs: how is digital media negotiated within the Jewish world? Scouring through the myriad uses of the Internet, mobile phones, digital games, and virtual reality programs, the author reviews three key facets of transformation that correspond with the primary properties of Jews' "lived religion," namely knowledge dissemination, consumption, and scripturalism; Jewish practice; communal authority; and identity. Exploring the accumulated scholarship on these themes enables a macroscopic perspective on the ways contemporary Jews respond to modernity by adopting or adapting to technologies to fit their rhythm of life. Ultimately, these understandings bear on the ways Jews incrementally enable changes in their religious experience, sources of learning, and manifestations of the rich variants of their Jewish identity.