Twenty some years ago I introduced the first desktop published version of this prayerbook to the Stanford Hillel High Holy Day Liberal Service. I must say that if you are going to learn how to do desktop publishing, page layout, font choice and, indeed, font creation, you don't want to do it on a book as large as a High Holy Day Machzor. But that is exactly what I did. This past spring and summer I took a sabbatical in order to finish the umpteenth revision of the things I learned about the connections between Judaism and computers, starting from the time I desktop published that first High Holy Day Machzor.

I do get a weekday off a week, and much of Shabbat. But I don't have the kind of time I need, in one day a week, to write and edit this kind of complicated material, as well as do all the errands I need to on non-Shabbat time. So I needed a Sabbatical to finish polishing these ideas off. My coauthor, Jeffrey Brandstetter, whom you know better as one of our long-winded Shofar blowers, is now going over his edits, and then we'll take this show and see where it goes. He would like to take a Sabbatical to finalize his edits, but he can't, so they won't be as extensive as mine, since I had the ability to concentrate over most of a quarter of a year.

I wrote the first major draft of the book I have just finished on a half sabbatical I received after six years with Etz Chayim, and now, having finished ten years here (who'd a thunk it'd been this long?) I have finished this book, and begun a major project to try and take Jewish thought to you in ways you may not live to fully see brought to fruition,, but your children, those becoming Bar/t Mitzvah in our congregation, will surely see.

I did not want a PhD, for a variety of reasons, but I do, from time to time, write scholarly articles. I hope to complete one this year based on the research and ingenuity from the Advanced Torah Study group that was done last year on the mental associations that connect and order the laws in the Book of Exodus. Our book, titled Uploading Prayer/ Downloading G0d: Mindware for a G0dwrestler, is also a "scholarly" book. It is an exploration of Jewish ideas presented using metaphors from the world of computers and the Internet. It is not intended for scholars, however. It is intended for all Jews who use computers, and all computer users who are Jews, or who wish to explore the intersections of science, technology, and spirituality.

Our Yom Kippur afternoon discussion session's keynote speakers, Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams, will also explore this area of thought. Joel is a physicist and cosmologist at UC Santa Cruz, and the leading authority on dark matter and dark energy. If you don't know what that means, you will find out in his video presentation. Nancy, his wife, is a poet and musician. They are active in Jewish renewal congregations, and have put science and mythmaking together. But, back to my sabbatical.

Our book put two of my three interests in writing together. The first is what I do every day, and that is explain Jewish ideas to Jews, and to people who would like to explore becoming a Jew. The second aspect of this book, which we only barely touch upon in the end, is fantasizing about what Jews and Judaism might be like in the mind of a person who is a computer-assisted mind, or even, totally, unbodied Mindware.

But before I blow your Mindware with some of the possibilities lurking in the very near future, let me just share with you a few of the insights and metaphors that Jeff and I mined from the world of computerization.

Part One: Human Mindware and how it relates to all existence.

Let me start with the very simple and very obvious, not in the order we treat these topics in our book. The first one is one I sent you last Chanukah, comparing how a MacIntosh user, swamped by a sea of PC's, is similar to being a Jew in a world which is 99.9% not Jews. What is it like to be a Jew, fiercely loyal to our DOS: that is, our Decalog Operating System, even though the world at large does not back us up. By 2006 Apple’s U.S. market had risen 16% over the previous year to a whopping 4.8%. That's not a lot, and most of the rest goes to Windows. But Mac users are passionately loyal to our Chosen System, and we pay more for our hardware and software than the far cheaper PC's. See the many metaphorical ties between Jews and Mac users? How do we deal with being the smallest of the monotheists? See our article from last year, which is, I believe, about to be put on our new congregational website.

One of the most important chapters in our book compares Judaism to an Operating System that runs the rest of the programs. For some Judaism is an operating system. But there are many for whom it is just one of the many application programs. And then, there are Jews for whom Judaism is only a screen saver. All of us are here, together, today. Our congregation is made up of all three. I should say that I run an emulation of a PC on my Mac, and that may be akin to how some of our congregation, who are not Jews, use their Jewish programs.

The very traditional wing of our people believe that Judaism today is the same Judaism that Moses brought down on Silicon Tablets from Mount Sinai. However, we liberals think that Judaism today, even in its Orthodoxies, are running something around version 7 or higher, but not version 1.0, the original and supposedly Perfect Operating System. We see Judaism historically, and we know that there has been a history of new releases and upgrades, many of which rewrote much of who we are and what we profess to believe.

We are, just now, on the verge of something very new: as computers become ubiquitous in our lives, Judaism will change. Teaching Judaism is difficult because it is in foreign, and ancient, languages, and there are scores of texts and commentaries on those texts. Most Jews, in fact, most people from most religions, function on very little real data, and much of the data we do function on is hearsay and urban legend. When we humans finally get to a time where the limitless storage of data is possible in a computer-assisted consciousness, that is, with implanted computer storage in our brains, we will finally have a choice to function as a well-informed populace. Wait until that happens. That will take us a quantum leap onward from the versions of Judaism™ today.

I say Judaism™ because most versions of Judaism are trademarked by rabbinical, congregational, and lay organizations who market their brand names, such as Reform™, Conservative™, Reconstructionist™, and Torah True™. Still, there is a growing number of congregations and other groups who prefer, like we do, to take the best of what all of them have to offer and live an eclectic Jewish life of our own making.

I want to make two more analogies to Jews and Jewish organizations before moving into Jewish thought. The first has to do with the main reason why MacIntosh computers are so revered, which is that they give good GUI. GUI is an acronym for Graphic User Interface. Those of you who used the oldest DOS computers saw only lines of text on a dark screen, and we had to type weird half words in an arcane and straight-jacketed syntax to make our computers work, Now we drag and drop and click, and do all kinds of things to "File Folders" in "Windows" on a "DeskTop" with a "Mouse." Basically, MacIntosh was the first personal computer that made computers more friendly to people like you and I who are not computer scientists.

Here I will make the analogy that what you are looking at in our prayerbooks, and the ways that this service is run, and the people among whom you are sitting are all part of the Graphic User Interface of this congregation. To the extent that we are easy to use, that is, user-friendly, we will succeed in attracting Jews and their families. To the extent that we are arcane, frustrating, unresponsive, and a host of other epithets we use to describe our computers, we will alienate people.

Who are we? Briefly, we are as varied a group of people as our REFLECTIONS booklet shows. From the ultra-hip Matisyahu and Lisa Nalick, to Saint Francis of Assisi to Robert Frost. You won't find that line-up in most congregational readings booklets! Yasher koach to Lisa Rogers and Jean Anderson who put that booklet together! What a great job they did! And thanks to all who submitted these readings! I hope you like this booklet, and will do this again next year, with other readings. Let this stir your imagination and go look for others to send to

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Those readings show that we are liberal and traditional, Jewish and of other world traditions, spiritual, and scientific in our thinking. Our Jewish expectations are also still a bit "same old same old." That is, Etz Chayim is not free, nor, any more, inexpensive, since we became a full-service housed congregation and left our funky freewheeling wandering ways.

Which leads me to a second concept we explore in our book, WYSIWYGness. WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzy wig") means "What You See Is What You Get." Essentially, it guarantees that what you see on your monitor is exactly how your document will print out—in font, size, layout, etc. I am going to quote a bit from our article to show you what we mean. Jews bear deep hurts born of rejections and put-downs suffered at the mouths of other Jews. These Jews are positive that any anticipated Jewish experience will recapitulate bad times they had. Still others, with no formal training or even informal acquaintance with Judaism and Jewish practice, are beset by feelings of anger, inadequacy, and inauthenticity. These Jews are also scared of their anticipated Jewish experience.

Both of these latter groups may even scorn those with whom they are about to interact. This works as an emotional vaccine, immunizing their emotions from further scarring. In these cases, WYSIWYG means: What You Scorn/Are Scared Of is what you get, because, usually, these folks will find a way to justify their preconceived negative feelings.

When people enter Congregation Etz Chayim, some see a Conservative Synagogue because of the amount of Hebrew in our services, though all of it is transliterated into English characters so all may participate. Others, see us as a Reform Temple, because of our many English alternative readings. To Conservatives, we seem Reform. To the Reform, we seem Conservative. Whatever their formative experience was, we are different from it, and that is often the impression they walk away with.

Additionally, some walk in the door and see only families with children, and feel that there is no place for them as single adults. Others see only single adults, and wonder if there are any families with children. It's the same group of people, but, fearing the worst, we often see the worst. If we seek in fear, we find what we fear.

So, what we seek is what we will get, and what we scorn is what we will get. If we seek out others like ourselves, we will find community. If we sit and wait for community to come to us, we will find our scared scorn justified, and will not stay in the congregation. It costs a few shekels to join, even though we do have a sliding scale and fair share dues to allow the wealthy to help carry those who are unable to pay much. Still, if we seek Jewish community only rarely, we will not last long with us. And if we see in Etz only what we scorn, we will, similarly, not last long in Etz Chayim.

I should also acknowledge that most of us experience some issue in our lives, at some time, that keeps us away from the congregation and its events and services for such long periods of time that it is hard to reprioritize being active on some level. If this describes you, then I invite you to make an effort to put services back in your personal calendar. It takes an effort, but the effort is usually justified. Remember, when we seek to make community happen, it will. WYSIWYG. What you seek is what you'll get.

I will explore a little about G0d, now, based on two of our metaphors. And then I will leave you with a taste of the future.

Lots of people know that the Sh'ma says that G0d is 0ne. What they seldom know is that our philosophical and mystical traditions agree that G0d is also nothing, zero. One and zero are, currently (pun intended) the basis of computing. Off and on, zero and one, are the bases of Jewish thought about G0d as well. How can G0d be nothing? Easy. Ask yourself this question: what thing is G0d? Answer: No-thing. Say no thing fast, and you have the word nothing. Nothing at all.

The atheists among us are now jumping up, about to say, "I told you so!" And you should know that theists and atheists agree that G0d is nothing. However, the syntax changes. Theists say that G0d is no-thing, while atheists say nothing is G0d.

All this talk of G0d and zero is why I spell the word "G0d" with a zero instead of a letter "O" in the middle. Writing G0d with a zero in the center is in acknowledgment of G0d's "coordinates" in the Y0u-niverse (i.e., 0, 0, 0, 0, ad infinitum). This convention serves as a reminder of the seeming paradox that G0d, as Zer0, centers the universe and all its dimensions. G0d=Zer0 is the P0int from which everything emanates and owes its existence. G0d as 0ne is every-where and every-thing and every-when. At the same time, G0d as Zer0 is no-where, no-thing and no-when.

If this is the first time you have contemplated this, you may be a bit lost, stunned, confused, or about to challenge it as wrong or nonsense. Let's talk, and I'll show you more about it.

I'll make an analogy from the Internet to G0d. The Internet has no center, and which includes all computers attached to it. So, while an email prayer is being typed on your computer, it is already in the Internet. Similarly, while an idea of a prayer is being articulated in our heads, it is already with G0d. That is, prayers go "no-where." They are, and always have been, already "there."

There is no center to G0d. We are, all of us creations, part of the Wh0le, like some infinitely massive parallel processing unit. G0d is not any one Where. Instead, G0d is a name we give to All of it, from the beginning ot the end, in time as in space. Monotheism, One-G0dness, is the functional equivalent of One Internet-ness. There are no others if they are connected to the Wh0le. Yes, there are individual identities and locales, but there is only one Internet, 0ne G0d, to which we upload our thoughts and prayers regularly. Uploading is not really any kind of going up or down. those terms originally applied to client computers connecting up to a server. Better than up as a concept, on these holy days think of uploading as a way of pulling away, allowing us to see more of the scene. Uploading does not even require G0d to be meaningful. Uploading our thoughts is about moving from a limited perspective to a broader, more universal perspective.

In this sense, it is akin to what happens in a movie when the camera pulls back to reveal more of a scene’s context. It does not matter whether the camera is pulling away in any particular direction. It could be looking down, up, or sideways at a scene. What is important is that it is pulling away from the scene, so we can put things in a "broader," or "higher," perspective.

When we pray, we pull our focus back, to see ourselves in a larger context, from a wider point of view. The further back we pull our perspective, the more our individual concerns disappear, and the more those of the world as a Wh0le come into focus. Think of this as a "G0d's-eye view," if you will, even though we acknowledge that we can never really comprehend what a "G0d's-eye view" means in any real way. But what we are doing is pulling back from our self so that it can see itself in the larger scheme of things and, at the same time, be seen by the Y0u-niversal Self.

Seeing things in a larger context can be both an exercise in pulling away in space as well as in time. When we pull away in time, uploading becomes an attempt to see things from the perspective of eternity (the infinity of time, as opposed to the infinity of space)

Part Two: Mindware Un-incarnated.

Mindware is software for the mind. Our ideas about who and what we are reside in our brains as interactive programs, no different, really, than the software that runs our computers.

If you have been paying attention to scientific news lately, you may have noticed a press conference that introduced a computer-augmented and woman. They were labeled, for sensationalist purposes, "Bionic People." They both have missing limbs that have been replaced by mechanical limbs. What is new is that they drive these limbs by means of thought. That's right, they think, and their thoughts, their Mindware, is connected to their limbs by means of computer chips wired into their brains. What scientists and engineers have already done is decipher our Mindware and translate our thoughts into computer commands that can drive artificial limbs.

This is also being done for eyes and ears. Continuing efforts to relieve the suffering of debilitated people will be the engine that ultimately results in our being offered computerized mental storage, as well as implanted programs that let us speak any language we wish, and to do all the math and science we want. Much of learning will consist, as it does now, of buying the right computer and programs. But those computers and programs will be installed into the brains of millions of people who will crowd in line to be among the first to benefit directly, wirelessly, from all the boons that external computers and blackberries and cellphones and cameras now offer.

I am a futurist, because, though I like much of what is, I wrestle with the limitations of the present. So my fantasies prowl around in more idealized universes, ones that I imagine would be more achievable in the future than today. These idealized universes may not be more attainable, given what I have seen of this world, but I do keep dreaming!

And so I write about looking into a mirror that looks back at you and suggests things to you. That is, I have been writing about what it could be like to fall into a looking glass, like some Jewish Alice in Wonderland.

I envision, at first, a handheld Jewish library. It would be a portal into every flight of fancy, every statement of morality and ethics, that Jewish imagination has ever taken. Later, this will be installed in us. Soon, even without having been born with the ability to read these documents in their original languages, we will be able to. I call library, this portal, a SifriYah, which is the Hebrew word for Library, which, fortuitously, has the ending Yah, signifying G0d, as in the word HalleluYah. That is, a SifriYah is Divine Library. A SifriYah would be the ultimate mental connection to and ability to understand the languages and "see" the texts of everything Jewish.

After we have gotten used to implanting computers, some of us will make the move the other way, downloading their mind into a new platform, one not made of meat, not subject to ingesting the dead bodies of other once-living creatures for energy and for growth. The first one of us to pass over could as easily be a radical vegan as it could be a techie. Some will see this passing over as a new Passover, as a signal from history that a new era is beginning, with new Moses and Joshuas to lead us out of the fleshpots of Egypts, where the "fleshpots" are the pots of flesh known as our bodies.

I will end here, without exploring the issues of Torah, Holy Days, and good and evil that we also have metaphors for. But enough for today!

Thinking these thoughts and polishing the prose to explain them is what I did on my sabbatical. If you hear me wax on about computers for the next couple of years, now you know why. Let's talk.