The Jews Were Internauts

About the Book

This book brings together the two major aspects of the Jewish myth – the people of the Book and the wanderer – to present an ancient concept of virtual reality. Drawing from Jewish mystical teachings, it speculates on possibilities to transcend reality by the use of special media. The longest exile in human history was responsible for shaping innovative prospects on linkage and space. Metaphors springing from the advent of widespread computer and Internet use offer new ways to understand rabbinic strategies for bonding in the lack of community and territory. They were able to devise means that can bring two or more places to be in the same site. Or as it was then called: "Jumping the Path".
In this piece of archeological science fiction, Rabbi Nilton Bonder connects traces left in the past of a sophisticated concept of “web”. This is a book about the birth of the notion of the "net" and the first attempts of being together, without necessarily being in one place. It is a book about the possibility that much more lies between illusion and reality, than we might suppose.
In a time when science was not capable of fostering imagination on the marvels of the universe, it was due to religion to manifest human speculations on wonder and awe. Nilton Bonder brings Jewish mystical texts and traditions of ancient times that can be better understood with our tools of communication and media such as the computer or the internet.
Was there a Windows 1751?
Were priests and prophets able to devise the principle of a “net”? Of a CWW , a Cosmic Wide Web?
Why was the ancient fiction interested not on “Time Travel”, but “Space Travel”, or as they called it, “Jumping the Way”?
From where could they have derived a concept of “virtual reality”?
What are the connections between “virtual reality” and the Messianic ideas as well as the Resurrection of the Dead?
These and some other fascinating questions are dealt in this book around mystical consideration on media and space.

About the Author

Rabbi Nilton Bonder was trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City and lectures regularly in the United States. Born in Brazil, he is a best selling author of eighteen books in Latin America. He leads one of Brazil most influential Jewish congregations and is also active in the civil rights and ecological causes. Some of his books have been translated in Europe and Asia and five of them in the US (The Kabbalah of Food, The Kabbalah of Money, The Kabbala of Envy, Yidische Kop -- Problem Solving in Jewish Lore, Learning and Humor and Our Immoral Soul -- A Manifesto of Spiritual Disobedience). His last book published in the US has been selected among the best 20 books on Judaica on 2002 and has been included in the Best Jewish Writing of 2002 - organized by Tikkun Magazine.
Our Immoral Soul was selected as the best brazilian play of 2007 by Veja Magazine, the most prestigious in the country. His latest book "Taking off Your Shoes" on an expedition with Harvard University on footsteps of Abraham, has made the best selling lists in the country.
He has led workshops for main corporations like IBM, MCI, ABN-Amro, Globo Network Television, Brazilian Oil Company and delivered lectures at Boston University, New York Central Library, American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Blanton Peale Counseling Center, Open Center, San Francisco and New York, Nationaal Vakbodsmuseum, Amsterdam, Leiden University, Omega Institute, The Learning Anex, San Francisco, Libreria L'Ancora, Milão, State of the World Forum, Brandeis University, Jewish Museum, Praga, and United Nations Peace Conference.