Parashat Shemot: Jewish Immersive Technology

 When I was a teenager in the 1980s, 3D films became the ‘new craze’ for a while.  They offered you the chance to experience a movie in a way that had not been possible for decades.  Filmmakers capitalized on the audience’s insatiable appetite for 3D films even if it meant sitting through tedious films (Jaws 3D anyone?) just to experience the thrill whilst simultaneously emerging with a mighty headache at the end.  There’s only so much torture my poor eyes could take peering at the screen, through flimsy cardboard ‘spectacles’ which housed red and blue filters.

After a while, interest dipped and 3D films quietly disappeared into the ether.

When they reappeared, a few decades later, the technology had improved and we donned more robust, clear plastic glasses instead.  At the start of the 21^st Century, it seemed as though every single film was being released in a 3D format, commensurate with the increased cost of viewing them.  This too ran its course and after the success of Avatar in 2009, the latest 3D excursion peaked and quickly faded away.

Interest in immersive technology did not disappear.  Although the 3D experiments proved to be short-lived, the notion that a person could immerse themself into a virtual environment, which also happened to be three-dimensional became more and more appealing.  Crucially, it also tapped into the public’s willingness to pay substantial sums to achieve this goal.

Virtual Reality headset kits, once thought of as too expensive to purchase, can now be found on Amazon for less than £50.  How many of us have been to museums and exhibitions and tried them on, only to be taken into environments that we would never have considered entering?

Immersive Technology is all around us, quite literally and some of its by-products are simply jaw-dropping.

Over the recent winter holiday, I experienced it in two different ways.  Firstly, I went to see the new Avatar film “The Way of Water’.  I chose to view it in a cinema that had a ‘ScreenX’ auditorium.  This means that the movie is projected on the screen in-front of you continuing onto both the left and right walls.  In old money, this is like ‘Panavision’ except that you are totally immersed in what is being displayed as your entire viewpoint is taken up by the scene before you.

Stephnie and I went to a fascinating new permanent exhibition called ‘Frameless’ next to Marble Arch.  You walk through rooms and are surrounded on all sides by images of famous paintings such as Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night Over the Rhöne’, Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (the melted clocks), Munch’s ‘The Scream’ and Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond: Green Harmony’ which are constructed before your eyes!  This is really something that cannot be adequately described and has to be seen to be appreciated.

I would suspect that you are probably trying to work out how all of this relates to this week’s Parasha.

When I was a child in school, although I had a fertile imagination, I found it extremely difficult to relate to my Chumash and Parasha lessons.  In the days before the internet and the ability to access any media available, we had films such as ‘The Ten Commandments’ and books that contained stilted photographs of biblical landscapes and monochrome diagrams, come maps.  How could I immerse himself into a pre-virtual reality world?  This was even before I discovered 3D.  How could the Torah speak to me growing up in 1970s Golders Green, a world away from the Biblical landscapes of ancient Israel, Mesopotamia and Egypt?

How can we, in the 21^st Century relate to Sefer Shemot?

The answer is less complicated than we think.  In fact, it’s there in front of us as we shall soon see.

Shemot, both in its form as a Parasha and as the second book of the Torah guides through a time period which began with the gradual enslavement of our people, through to the first year in the wilderness and the creation of the Mishkan, our proto-Temple.

It is a story that we have been told for as long as we can remember.  The infant Moshe is placed into a basket which is literally immersed into the River Nile.  From the outset, his existence is vulnerable, granted Pharaoh’s decree that all Hebrew babies be drowned.

As we know, he survives and grows up within the Palace walls as the ‘Prince of Egypt’.

What happens over the next decades, however, is where our immersive experience begins and it’s connected with the Jewish attitude to time.

Humans are governed by time.  It dictates the periods in the day when we can wake up; eat our meals; go to work; have meetings with colleagues; start and finish lessons on school; purchase items (although this is less relevant since the advent of e-commerce, where we can buy items online at whatever time we choose); go out for a meal or go to sleep at night.

Before we know it, weeks fly by and time itself seems to accelerate between fixed periods, such as seasons and years.  We talk about ‘losing track of time’ or ‘wasting time’ because we understand how important it is to us.  Although we are immersed in it, it sometimes feels as though that immersion is leading to drowning, where we feel that we are ‘running out of time’.

Judaism takes us out of the ‘water’ and as we read in Chapter 2.10, so does Moses’ name.

“And she called his name Moses (Moshe) – ‘va’tomer, ki min hamayim meshituhu’ – ‘because out of the water, I drew him’.

How can one immerse oneself in time, without losing track of it?

The answer is by making the ‘time count’.  Six days of the week can fly by, but when the        25-hour period that we call Shabbat enters, we pause and endow the day with a special sanctity.  For some, this can include coming to shul and joining in a service.  For others, it may revolve around the Friday night meal.  We don’t need 3D spectacles, Cinema X or Virtual Reality headsets to immerse ourselves into Shabbat.  We just need to take the time to enjoy the experience that it gives us.

As we read through the first few Parshiot of Sefer Shemot which detail first the slavery and then the Exodus, we will look forward to the ultimate immersive experience when we recall our ancestor’s lives in Egypt at the Pesach Sedarim.  The matzah, the maror, the charoset and the vegetables that we dip into salt water.  This is Jewish time.  This is our Immersive Technology.

Returning to my younger self, if I wanted to imagine what it must have been like to spend my last night in Egypt, I just had to stay awake long enough after the Mah Nishtana, to appreciate the Torah not only in three dimensions but also into the fourth, the one which includes food!

How do I immerse myself in time?

I follow the Jewish Calendar which takes me on an annual ride starting in Egypt over three thousand three hundred years ago; the Persian and Greek Empires (Purim and Chanukah); the Babylonian and Roman Empires (Tisha B’Av and the other associated fasts) and finally to the present day with the re-establishment of our wonderful state in 1948 and reunification of Jerusalem nineteen years later.  Let’s not forget the festival when we move our entire bodies out of our houses.  How much more immersed could we be?

And all this within the span of a lunar year.

Fads such as 3D come and go and salespeople will continue to do their utmost to convince us that ‘this technology’ is the best one yet.  As Jews, we can take a moment and share with them our greatest immersive invention – the Jewish calendar.

Have a fully immersive and peaceful Shabbat!

Shavuah Tov.