Community and Society Archive

Welcome to Community and Society where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the changing nature of community and society in America today and on the challenges and opportunities these changes represent for the Jewish people in America at the dawn of a new century. Every other week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

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Let My People Go Fetch

By Jennifer E. Krause

Just weeks ago we ushered in a new century. With the words "Lecha dodi likrat kallah" we went out to meet the Sabbath bride and to greet a new age. Over and over, midnight spread throughout the world, an intricate globe-shaped domino pattern captured by satellite dishes, cameras, and commentators. We reviewed the passage of time and reveled in it. We viewed ourselves as fortunate spectators, alive to see history in the making, witnesses to a rare passage. Yet now, after months of preparation and retrospection, anticipation and appreciation, another transition awaits our attention - from watching time to shaping it.

Almost four decades ago, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

King observed that time is neutral by nature, careful to point out that time does not deliver to us, but that we deliver it, wrestle redemption from its grasp. With the revolutionary technological advances that are shaping our lives, our work, our leisure, and even our relationships, it is easy to feel that time, contrary to Dr. King's contention, is rolling along on the wheels of inevitability and that it is rolling right up to our front doors. With so much to marvel at each day, it is simple to assume that if it hasn't been invented yet, if it hasn't happened yet, it surely will. Time, we think, will take care of progress. We wait for it, as if we are waiting for a delivery.

Nowadays we needn't wait long for any delivery. Airplanes and the Internet have seen to that. The most recent addition to the burgeoning cyber delivery biz is Urbanfetch.com. Urbanfetch's homepage banner asks, "What can we fetch for you?" The answer is virtually everything. Books, music, movies, games, electronics, gifts, and food are at your fingertips twenty-four hours a day and, if you want, at your doorstep in less than an hour. Returns are also retrieved in sixty minutes or less. So, if you find that you simply must have two Mango-Kiwi Snapples, three blueberry bagels, "Rocky IV" on DVD, and a Palm Pilot V at 6 o'clock in the morning, just say, "Go fetch!"

Fetchers (not to be confused with kvetchers) of every kind abound. Too tired or too busy to tackle the groceries list? Peapod.com, "America's on-line grocer," will shop for you and deliver your groceries at any time that you specify. Need a book? Barnes and Noble or Amazon will have it to you in no time, and at a discount, thanks to delivery mavens like FedEx. They have absolutely, positively been getting it there overnight for so long that the company name has become a verb. Man's home is no longer just his castle, it's his grocery store, pharmacy, bookstore, movie theater, restaurant, and appliance warehouse.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having things delivered. Convenience is not the harbinger of civilization's tragic downfall. Some might argue, in fact, that it is keeping the downfall at bay. Less time spent on life's little errands means more time with friends and loved ones, more time to volunteer, to relax and enjoy. What's more, online shopping may well force conventional retailers to offer more competitive prices and better service. An ad for a new e-tail shopping site plays on this very notion, tempting mall-goers away from stores with a guaranteed perk: rude, inattentive salespeople do not exist in the virtual marketplace. Surely this must be a good thing.

Yet just because it might be good doesn't mean that we shouldn't ask questions. For instance, how will having the ability to have any and everything delivered straight to our doorstep transform our sense of agency, selfhood, and community? How will people living in a "go fetch" culture continue to see themselves as agents of deliverance and not simply as its passive recipients? How do we keep ourselves from confusing progress with redemption? In the words of Dr. King, "Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet…we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this…."

The story of Israel's exodus from Egypt challenges the "go fetch" mentality. As the Israelites attempt to leave slavery behind, six hundred chariots and a mob of Egyptian horsemen are hot on their heels. With Pharoah's army fast approaching, Moses turns to his people and says, "Don't worry. Just wait and see what God has in store. Stay where you are, and God will deliver." Hearing this, God cries out to Moses, "What are you waiting for? You lift up your rod, you hold out our arm over the sea, and you part the waters!" Moses springs to action, and with God's help, the Israelites walk through the water to safety and freedom. There are certainly moments when the people place their orders and God delivers - they want food, and manna rains from the sky; they want meat, and quail appear as if from nowhere; they are thirsty, and water comes forth from a rock. But at the moment of deliverance, a cry of "go fetch" gets you nowhere. If you really want it, you have to go fetch redemption for yourself.

Passover, the time of redemption, is a New Year according to the Torah. As it is written in the Book of Exodus: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. Here we are in January, the beginning of months on the Gregorian calendar. A New Year and a new century are well under way. The words of Dr. King ring as true in 2000 as they did in 1968. Not every neighborhood - virtual or otherwise - is a brotherhood. Progress and redemption are not necessarily the same thing. With that in mind, what will we go fetch for ourselves in this new era?