No matter what they’re doing, Apple is relevant. The main genius of their marketing is that they would rather be hated than ignored. Apple will be relevant, even if it’s in a bad way. This raises an important question for us. How are we relevant? Do we need to be coming out with a new line of products and releasing them on new networks every year so that we’ll matter to the modern world?
In Deuteronomy 8:3 we are told that we can’t survive only on food, but on every word that God speaks. In other words, Torah will always be as relevant to our daily lives as lunch is. Exactly what lunch looks like may change from time to time, place to place, but whether it’s PB&J, or Spanish rice and refried beans, lunch is still lunch. Torah is still Torah.
The Torah will always be relevant because it grounds us. There will be days when nothing goes right, and when even prayer isn’t much comfort, but having prayer in our lives still gives us one thing that we can come back to, one person we can always vent to. The Torah also grounds us in ethics. I don’t always do what’s right, but I know what’s right, and in my life that’s been vital.
Let’s take this back to computers, because they give us a good metaphore for Torah. As much as they adjust over time, they stay essentially the same. I have the same keyboard as the very first word processing machines. My motherboard isn’t the same as a motherboard twenty years ago, but, on the other hand, it really is, and it’s the same with my religious hardware. I may not wear the same clothes as the Rambam did, but I follow the same code of modesty. Then there’s software. Microsoft recently revamped Word, but it’s still a word processor, and as long as we have computers we’re probably going to have word processors. It’s the same in prayer, I can pray in English, a language which didn’t even exist a thousand years ago, but I’m still going to pray, and as long as we have language we’re going to have prayer because it’s what makes us human, and what makes us alive, just as much as word processors are what make computers useful to 90% of us.
Now, I know that about 15% of my audience uses Mac/iphone/ipad to read my blog. Are you proud of the fact that you’re not one of those PC users? I know you are. 42% of you use firefox, and I know you because I’m one of you. You’re proud of the fact that you’re not one of those IE people, and the 6% Safari users are even prouder. So if I’m proud of asserting my independence by using Firefox, there is no reason for me to be ashamed of wearing my kippa in public. There is no reason for me to be embarrassed about looking or acting different. I use Firefox, and I wear a kippa, and I am not ashamed.
And that’s what I learned from Steve Jobs.
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"The Proletarians have nothing to lose but their shackles. They have a world to win." Karl Marx
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