Transcript
ROGER BENNETT: ...
We are all very aware that we're living in an era of change within change. Previously unassailably powerful institutions have been kind of brought to their knees by the world changing about them. The record industry, as the front cover of our report so beautifully captures, has been turned inside out by the iPod. Network television has been thrown asunder by the power of the TiVo box. Even the Democratic Party, the DNC, has been turned upside down a little by MoveOn. And the army, that wonderful collective institution, is trying to persuade anyone that will listen that it's an Army of One. All of these institutions have been changed or are trying to pretend that they've changed by the forces that are surrounding them. And the question, essentially, that we're going to tackle this afternoon is how should or how well America's religious traditions navigate this extremely adaptive era.
Using the word "traditions" is an indicator of the challenge that we were all discussing. And these traditions are, in the main, thousands of years old. They've kind of thrived, you can make the case, because they cut against modern culture. They're not kind of sensitive, or over-sensitive, to popular or modern culture. They don't focus-group a huge amount, they don't poll a huge amount, unlike the record industry, network television, and the political parties. But how can they, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim alike, discern which trends are essentially just that, fads which can be ignored, and which are more long-term trends and we can disregard them at our own peril?
Those are the questions that have perplexed all the members of the network which I am honored to represent this afternoon, Reboot, which over the past three years has engaged essentially a network of individuals from this target audience, most of whom would consider themselves unlikely candidates to do anything Jewish at the outset. Reboot essentially has engaged this network in contemplating generational changes in identity, community, or meaning, and to also take those conversations a step forward through a series of actions which are experiments, experimental mechanisms of meaning that can allow or not allow community to form around them, from journals—"Guilt & Pleasure," which is about to launch—to a record label, a film production company, and a research wing, the product of which is this that we are going to discuss this afternoon.
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