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?
Thank You
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