2 Michael Stroh message, and the idea that electrification will replace print media as the main vehicle of communication. What are hot and cold media? A hot medium gives you everything it has; a cold medium opens spaces for participation. A hot medium makes you cold; a cold medium makes you hot. When I started my career,[ had a McLuhanesque epiphany. During a Saturday morning worship service. I realized that the congregation was irrelevant.[f there were no congregants, the rabbi would read, the cantor would chant, the choir would sing and the service would be unaffected by the absence of any people praying. Our Reform services were a very hot medium; they were well designed to create“God ’s frozen people”. But, we have learned and our worship now has become much cooler, opening spaces for people to participate and become warm. Now worship at conventions of the Union for Reform Judaism resembles revival meetings, with 3,000 people singing, reading and feeling.
The medium is the message means that media are not neutral transmitters of information. Rather, the medium enters into the communication and shapes what we receive. The content is not just an idea or information, but the information in the shape determined by the medium. The Protestant Reformation was Bible centered and affirmed the priesthood of all believers, requiring people to read the Bible . This theology could not have appeared before the invention of mechanical printing made it possible for every home to have a Bible . Protestantism was a phenomenon of print communication. Before mechanical printing most Jews did not own a Talmud ; there might be one in the synagogue.