Learning Torah at my Computer: Codes and Creativity
The beauty of learning Torah without access to a packed Beit Midrash is that the canon of books that I typically consult has grown extensively. The sheer number of sefarim in digital databases that are immediately available at my fingertips far surpasses the library of any single Rabbi living before the year 2000. I can read more “books” from my home than that the Rambam or Rav Moshe Feinstein ever saw in their entire lives.
The explosion of online Jewish primary texts in the last ten years is simply astounding. If you have access to the Bar-Ilan Response Project, HebrewBooks, Sefaria, alhatorah, Otzar HaChochma and Meforshei haOtzar you do not need a single printed book! All of these are archives of primary sources; let’s not even start to list the plethora of online journals and secondary literature.
Nonetheless, some aspects of this new reality are terribly disappointing and sad. The “death of the book” is likely not coming any time soon. Though I have been known to quip that books are going the way of the dodo, I actually don’t think that will happen in my lifetime, or in the lifetime of my children. (It might happen in the lifetimes of my future grandchildren). This brief reflection is not about the nostalgia of the printed word or how much I love my Vilna Sha”s. Instead, I want to think about how the information age impacts serious Halakhic research and decision making (psak). I will then move to show a key pattern regarding why certain times lean toward codification and how that speaks to us today. …