Digital Communication: Parshat Yitro - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[Music] unlike many other religions Judaism is not a cult of personality true Judaism has its Patriarchs its prophets but no one figure emerges as the Pinnacle the focus of all belief the focus of Jewish belief is a book that book is called the Torah but to all the Torah a book would be misleading what exists in this world is a scroll of parchment is an embodiment of a Holiness that emanates from the highest possible reaches of the creation Judaism understands that this world is but the lowest of a myriad of Worlds each chaining down from Hashem himself these spiritual worlds are of unimaginable Holiness but as they Cascade and descend downwards the light of each World becomes filtered and diminished and even though each lower world contains the blueprint within it of the entire connected sequence of the higher worlds above it and absolutely replicates their image and form nevertheless the level of Holiness and light in any particular World cannot be compared in any way to that of the world above it however where the holy Torah is concerned even though it also Cascades down through infinite levels from its high holy source and from world to world and from level to level nevertheless its original Holiness is preserved intact meaning just as it is in its source so it is in this world there's nothing Holier in this physical world than a saer Torah let's understand this by way of an analogy we're living at the beginning of the age of artificial intelligence at the heart of AI is digital technology and a thought of digital technology is something called the binary code all digital media are based on this simplest of codes that can be the presence or the absence of an electric pulse the turning off or on of a microscopic electronic switch every digital device be it a computer or a fridge or a frighteningly lifelike humanoid uses the same fundamental Code Zero no current or one current the strength of digital technology is precisely because it is a code provided the original code can be still made out the message can be regenerated exactly as it was whether that message is a picture or a sound let's take the example of M code M code was a system of communicating widely used before radio was sophisticated enough to permit Voice transmission now the beauty of this or any code for that matter is that the entire meaning of the message can be reconstructed provided the original code is intact it doesn't matter how much static or noise or other kind of interference arounds the signal provided that you can tell a DOT from a dash the original signal can be reconstructed exactly in an analog system like an oldfashioned record for example the medium becomes part of the message if the medium decays so does the message in a sense the Torah is the ultimate digital communication however much it is surrounded by the background noise and static of this physical world it never loses its original pristine holiness