The Book of Life in a Digital Age

"[T]hree books are opened in heaven on Rosh Ha-Shanah, one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate. The thoroughly righteous are forthwith inscribed in the Book of Life, the thoroughly wicked in the Book of Death, while the fate of the intermediate is suspended until the Day of Atonement" (-- Talmud tractate Rosh HaShanah 16b).

Tradition teaches that on Rosh Hashanah God decides whether or not to write us into the Book of Life for the coming year. The decision is made on the basis of our past deeds. The Book is sealed on Yom Kippur, giving us Ten Days to repent from our sins in order to be written and sealed into the Book of Life. Many people find this image terrifying and theologically problematic. There are two sides to the image, however. One is God's sovereign power to determine life and death, but the other is our role in determining our future based on our moral/religious decisions. We are neither powerless nor all-powerful in determining our futures and the prayers of Rosh Hashanah reflect this understanding.

-Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

In truth You are the judge,

The exhorter, the all‑knowing, the witness,

The One who inscribes and seals,

Remembering all that is forgotten.

You open the book of remembrance

Which proclaims itself,

And the seal of each person is there.

​ (Unetaneh tokef prayer)

All of the Amidah prayers include entreaties to God to remember and inscribe the Jewish people in the book of life. In the rabbinic imagination, God was described as a heavenly scribe, recording all of the deeds of human beings and diligently writing them down in various heavenly archives: the book of life, the book of remembrance, the book of livelihood, the book of merit, and so on. On Rosh Hashanah, God records our deeds and on Yom Kippur God judges our spiritual fate for the coming year. Therefore, the Days of Awe are a time when all life on earth is subjected to God’s review and judgment.

-- Rabbi Daniel Kohn

Days are scrolls: write on them what you want to be remembered.

-Bahya ibn Pakuda (Jewish philosopher/judge, early 11th century) in Hovot HaLevavot

How does Bahya - who is much later than the Bible and rabbis - view the image of a Book

of Life differently than the authors of our earlier texts?

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, the 18th century Chassidic leader, was known as "the defense attorney of the Jewish people," because he constantly beseeched God to deal kindly with His people.

One year, when Rosh Hashana fell on Shabbat, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak went to the front of the synagogue to lead the congregation in prayer. Before beginning, he looked heavenward and said: "God, today is Shabbat. You taught us in Your holy Torah that Shabbat may only be broken in order to save a life. I demand that you keep the laws which You gave us. Since writing is prohibited on Shabbat, You have no right to record anybody in the Book of Death. You may only break Shabbat to record all of mankind in the Book of Life!"

From the media in recent days . . .

We are all being rated these days. Doctors, professors, cleaners, restaurants, the purse repair store I looked up on Yelp this morning. The app Lulu lets women rate the men they date. In Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center launched a pilot program that lets patients go online to read their therapists’ notes, which, in a way, is getting a rating from your shrink.

Who wants to hear what anyone thinks of you? That’s why talking behind your back was invented. I avoid reading reviews of my books for fear I’ll never write another sentence, and now I realize I am in danger of being rated whenever I leave the house. Do restaurants review diners? “Complained that the chopped salad wasn’t chopped” — I’m sure my waiter at lunch recorded that about me just last week.

I have long been done with school. Nevertheless, it turns out, I am going to be getting report cards for the rest of my life. Remember your permanent record, as in “This is going on your permanent record.”

The web is now your permanent record. And everything is going on it.

- Delia Ephron, NYTimes 8.29.14

In a crime-fighting episode hailed as yet another wonder of the digital age, a cadre of online Twitter sleuths may have helped Philadelphia detectives identify a group of raucous 20-somethings last week after the group hurled slurs and beat up a male gay couple on the evening of Sept. 11.

The crime may have been solved this week after police released a grainy surveillance video of the suspects Monday – a timeworn tactic since the days of posting “Wanted” posters in post offices, as well as on “crime stopper” TV shows and other media outlets.

But in this case, police were aided just hours after posting the surveillance video as tech-savvy Twitter and Facebook users employed their sites’ digital tracking tools to hone in on the suspects – a group of white men and women, who police described as “clean cut and well-dressed” professionals out together on a Thursday night. After police released their surveillance capture, a Twitter user sent out a Facebook photo he came across that appeared to match the suspects posing in an unnamed restaurant. Other users quickly identified the restaurant in the Philly neighborhood through its interior decor. Then Twitter user @FanSince09 employed the Facebook tool Graph Search, which can search all the public data online to track social media users who check in at a particular spot. Seeing some of the people who matched the police surveillance video, @FanSince09 called the police.

“This is how Twitter is supposed to work for cops,” tweeted Philadelphia Police detective Joseph Murray on Tuesday. “I will take a couple thousand Twitter detectives over any one real detective any day.”

Yet even as the episode has been celebrated as a triumph for “crowdsourcing” the solving of crime, some ethicists caution that such Twitter-era surveillance tools could ultimately do as much harm as good.

“There’s a very fine line,” says Aram Sinnreich, a digital privacy expert at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “Obviously, it’s a good thing that citizens are feeling empowered to share information with one another using social media and Internet tools to try to enforce social standards and to seek collective justice.

“The problem is when the police and other government or powerful institutions become involved in the process,” Professor Sinnreich continues. “The surveillance infrastructure is so powerful today that when already powerful institutions become involved, the potential for exploitation of those powers is so great that it becomes inevitable.”

--Christian Science Monitor, 9/18/14