Fast Food Judaism

This morning in my regular quick scan of the news I came upon this article.

The gist of the article is that there is a new service via Twitter that allows people to tweet prayers to someone who will print it out and place the prayer in the Western Wall.

For those who may be unaware, the Western Wall is the remnant of the retaining wall the surrounded the 2nd Temple In Jerusalem. Today it serves as the most sacred site for Jews. There is a tradition that if you place a written prayer in cracks in the wall, that it will receive special attention from God. As an aside the wall is cleaned out by the Rabbis who over see it 2 times a year and the prayers are buried according to Jewish custom.

Now I am among those who agree that there is something sacred about the Western Wall. I felt it the very first time I visited the site. My heart skipped when I saw it from afar and when I touched the stones I felt a fulfillment of the generations of my family returning to that place.

Through the year I spent in Israel, I visited many times, sometimes to see the scene, such as Tisha B'av, other times as a place for reflection or quiet conversation, and other times to fulfill the commandment of pilgrimage to the site (on Sukkot and Passover - I was not Israel during Shavuot). There is definitely something sacred about the site that is connected to the Jewish people's history, struggles and our unique relationship with God.

There is nothing sacred about Twitter. While I was impressed with how Twitter has served as an important conduit of information from Iran during the current political unrest, I find Twitter to be mostly junk, Facebook without the depth (and I find Facebook normally as deep as your average puddle). Its main use seems to be feeding celebrity narcissism and the transmission of irrelevant minutia between people.

Therefore, the idea of Tweeting a prayer to the western wall, strikes me as having the same shallowness as suggesting we can follow God on Twitter. I have always been skeptical about writing prayers for the Wall in general, but I see it as an idea that teaches the importance of the wall itself. In a teaching situation as well, having people wirte notes that will be physically carried to the wall by someone they know can impart a small portion of the feeling of the sacredness of the site to those who have never been there.

Twittering to the wall, however, I see as fast food Judaism. It may be tasty, but it is no where near as good as sitting down for a fine meal, and too much of it will harm your physical well being. The same is true for fast food Judaism. God is no more likely to hear your prayer on twitter than if you hold that prayer in your heart. It may satisfy some quick need, but it ultimately is detrimental to the true body of Judaism - that is community.

True prayer for Judaism can come at any time, but ultimately the place for payer in Judaism is in the context of a community. That is, in part, what makes the Western Wall such a sacred site, it is a gathering place where all Jews come together and have come together for 3000 years. When we suggest that the sacredness of a place can somehow be transmitted on-line by anonymous people sticking your computer printed message in the cracks of a wall, we cheapen what that place has meant to so many for so long.