new literacy and jewish literacy

Jewish Peoplehood and the New Literacy

GA, November 2009

Avi Warshavski

Head of Humanities Dep. CET

• Canon• Skills• Activity

“Jewish Literacy is not only one

desideratum of the peoplehood

agenda; in many ways it is the

peoplehood agenda”

(The Case for Peoplehood, Dr. Erica Brown and

Misha Galperin)

Jewish Literacy

• Transition from oral to written culture• Transition from scroll to codex• Transition from script to print

The Influence of Technological Revolutions on Content

The text keeps changing, like a live organism, adapting itself in an evolutionary, survival process in response to technology revolutions

• Context is dead• Back to visuals and icons• New tools for expression and representation (video, 3D)• Associative expression• An active point of view• Creativity• Short texts• Blurring the boundaries between "professionals" and

"amateurs”• Collaborative communities (the power of weak connections)

Outlining the New Literacy

• Crumbling of the canon• Dramatic change in regards to skills• Increased sense of involvement and identity

The Jewish Literacy and the New Literacy

Texts will not survive unless they adapt to new ways of representation

• It is about hard evidence and facts we may like it or moan about it, we can’t change it.

• Invest in finding creative ways to transfer old content into new vessels - rather than assume that it will happen by itself

• We cannot establish a new Facebook - we should join existing trends rather than create new ones .

• Adopt a “bridging” strategy between the old literacy and the new one –

rather than giving up one for the other

How to Respond to These Phenomena?

psookim – the Text at the Center

psookim – Commentary Using a Variety of Media

psookim –Identity and Participation

Thank You