The Internet: A Revolution in Human Conscience 7

relate to everything functionally. This is not, per se, immoral, but is the realm in which immorality happens, where we treat people as a means. Buber , contra Heidegger , posits another world, an I­ Thou world, open to human beings, in which we relate person to person and not person to function. Yet, attempts to change a Gesellschaft culture to a Gemeinschaft culture have resulted in Fascism and Nazism . Does this mean we can only live in a Gesellschaft world, an Ayn Rand world? Can there be[-Thou possibilities in the midst of the I-It world?

Reform Judaism teaches community, which is a Jewish value. But it also believes in individual choice. It looks with nostalgia at a Gemeinschaft world, but would not exist without a Gesellschaft world. We teach Jewish tradition, but we came in to existence in a post-Enlightenment world in which we had to negate tradition to make progress. We want to negate and preserve tradition at the same time. We want to teach an attitude of reverence for tradition while we eliminate and transform traditions. No easy task! We want to create community in our congregations, yet we teach our congregants to make individual choices. Our values, many times, clash with each other. We yearn for Gemeinschaft but we know the individualized, narcissistic, consumerist, anti-tradition, technological, Internet-connected world in which we live epitomizes Gesellschaft .

Does the Internet make all this worse? Are people less and less connected in any meaningful community? My daughter was at a wedding where no one at her table spoke to anyone else at the table. They were all on cell phones talking and texting. What does this mean? Will communities in the future be virtual communities? What will this mean for Judaism ?