According to The Daily Meme, a meme is “some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions,” and also, “an idea that, like a gene, can replicate and evolve.” I first heard about this idea academically in a college philosophy class, and it interested me a bit then. I’m not sure the blog version counts, but it is fascinating and gets me all excited with different sorts of new-media implications. I’ve wondered if I’d be asked to participate in the “sevens” meme and I have (by Ze’ev), but I hadn’t answered any of the questions before reading Zman Biur’s discussion on the topic. In brief, he traces the evolution of the “sevens” meme in its transmission throughout the Jblog community, noting additions and subtractions, and asks himself whether it’s best to answer the questions as they’ve been handed to him or to answer the questions that are closest to the originals. My own thoughts on this issue are as follows:
Jewish practice is kind of like scoring a tennis game. If we discover an error in the score, we proceed to correct the error in the future but not in the past. For example, in my grandfathers’ generation, the Jews didn’t have the snail to produce techelet, but now we do, so in my generation a tallit simply isn’t complete without it. Likewise, it’s not a problem to Ze’ev or to me that he transmitted an incomplete list of questions, but now that I’m aware of the “true” questions list, I should strive to answer them to the best of my ability without failing to answer the questions that I’ve been given, and without insisting that Ze’ev go back to add to his own answers.
Every transmitted text changes and will continue to change, and halacha is no exception. Sometimes this is liberating and sometimes it’s dangerous, but in the halachic discourse, even knowing that changes are being made, Jews have always downplayed change and even sometimes denied the reality of change, with complex explanations to explain it away. My problem with halachic change is when some people, citing the documentary proof that halacha has changed in the past, argue that change should be the new aim and zeitgeist, that anything unpleasant should be subject to change, and that in our generation we are suitable agents to effect that change. Remembering the wise advice that change, to be lasting, must be gradual, I accept change but insist that it it ought to be pursued with caution, and not celebrated, lest things get out of hand. Similarly, the problem with changing a meme isn’t that the questions change in transmission from one blogger to the next, since we all expect that they will. The problem is whether one generation in the transmission process can simply erase questions and deternine that no one in the future will answer those. I say that no one blogger should exercise that kind of power and control over everyone who gets the meme from him.
The question, then, is whether I am qualified, suitable or authorized to take the questions Ze’ev has passed to me and to accept them while also trying to adapt the “sevens” meme back to what I believe it once was and what it ought to be again. Imagine a Jew who’s raised in a Reform house of worship, without any knowledge of halacha, by parents and educators who were also raised in Reform houses of worship and who also had no knowledge of halacha. If such a Jew begins to educate himself and observe the mitzvot, is he rejecting the tradition of his father and his father’s father, or is he returning to the tradition of his father’s father’s father’s father and his father’s father’s father’s father’s father? The proper Jewish answer is that he’s doing the latter and that he’s to be encouraged to incorporate more mitzvot into his daily life as he becomes able and competent to do so. And the same principle should be applied here: Ze’ev is not to blame for transmitting only a partial list of questions – on the contrary, he should be praised and honored for doing his best to make sure the meme passed to another generation. But since, in this generation, my distant meme-cousin Zman Biur has identified the original, “authentic” text, I believe I would be wrong not to follow it and to pass it on to others. So here we go.
seven things I plan to do before I die :
- live in Israel (done! July 2004 – present), particularly in Yesha (maybe one day soon), on the East Bank (I’m not ruling it out)
- live in New York (done! September 1999 – June 2003)
- go to the Temple Mount (done! first time July 2004) and see the rebuilt Temple (one of these days)
- take the subway to a Yankees home game in the House that Ruth Built (done! first time April 2000)
- be a soldier in the Israeli army (still working on this, weighing my options and don’t know how to proceed)
- write persuasively (I have some ideas)
- educate youth
seven things I can do:
- edit English prose, teach English to Hebrew- and Spanish-speakers
- cook a few of the meals that I love
- download
- laundry
- archeology
- thrift (that is a verb)
- take nice pictures
seven things I can not do:
- convince anyone to do anything, for any reason
- get enough sleep
- keep in touch with people
- read medieval philosophy
- “sell” myself, network, schmooze
- play the drums
- write a novel (and I’m not going to try, either)
seven things that attract me to the opposite sex (this list is highly incomplete):
- intelligence
- creativity
- values like mine
- interests like mine
- interests unlike mine
- a personality unlike mine
- passion
seven things that I say most often:
- Word.
- Booyakasha.
- Big up.
- ??? ?? ????
- Rock.
- I shall do my best.
- Ciao.
seven celebrity crushes (I’ll admit that I have a difficult time with this category because I don’t have access to television or magazines, so my celebrity-exposure is seriously limited):
- Geulah Cohen – she is so hardcore, grown men swoon in her presence
- Daniella Weiss – ditto
- Peggy Noonan – great writer, great thinker
- Carolyn Hax – she makes everything make sense
- Eilat Mazar – she does what I do, only professionally and very well
- Oriana Fallaci – the passion!
- Bat Ye’or – I owe her so much
seven people I want to do this:
seven more people I want to do this, who didn’t fit on the above list:
another seven people:
I understand that many people I’ve “tagged” will not answer the questions I’ve passed to them – in some cases because they don’t read my blog, in others because they find memes too boring for an entertaining blog or too light for a serious blog, and in others because they don’t have time. This is the same worry and these are the same challenges confronting the parents and educators who transmit the Jewish tradition to future generations. They can do their best to live Jewishly, but without passing down that sense effectively, they’re not being true to their own parents and educators – or to themselves.
Your discussion of the “meme seven” list reminds me of a well thought out yeshivah lecture. Your answers, rather interesting. I fear I will never be a soldier, but I have been encouraged to fulfill my goal of law school, and then put the degree to good use for the am h’aretz. Seems like sound advice to me.
Ari, thanks for the compliment, and consider yourself tagged to answer the same questions. But please – the last thing the world needs is another Jew lawyer. Why don’t you pursue a career in academia?