Post-Geographic Judaism
Anyone who has a message relevant to any segment of the general populace in America, be they corporate or non-profit, will eventually have to develop and maintain some sort of presence on social networks if they want their message to be heard. Period. We already know that the majority of young adults (75% of Americans aged 18-24, according to Pew) are on social networks, but 3.2 million seniors have also joined Facebook in the past year. Social networking is bigger than email. Social media has far beyond proven itself as being an integral part of any marketing or publicity strategy.
But on a sociological level, social networking has also irreversibly altered the definition of the interpersonal relationship. A "friend" is what one gains with a click of a button, itemized on a "list"; what one "likes" is their content. We make new "friends" when we find other network members with similar interests. Ours is an age of feeds and connections, of following and stumbling, of seamlessly interacting with our favorite brands, celebrities and highschool classmates in a growing sea of content. Those who interact with the same type or source of content — be they programmers updating the same piece of open-source software, a social network’s user base, or a group of armchair videographers documenting their lives on YouTube — invariably eventually form a "community."
Essentially, the affiliated Jewish community could be similarly defined: a group of people who choose to interact with the same type of content — granted, much more sublime (Divine?) content than YouTube’s — united by a bond infinitely stronger than a mass group invitation.  Today’s "community" is a group of people whose connection is not determined by geography, but by their affinity for the content which unites them. It is the affinity for publicly available code that unites the open source community; similarly, it is the affinity for Jewish values, texts and concepts that unites the Jewish community.Â
Affinity and geography may not always intersect. It holds true for web 2.0 and exponentially more true for Jewish life. There is no shortage of testimonies of people who are bogged down by the geographically-defined Jewish communities in which they live.Â
It has become counter-productive, then, to define Jewish community in terms of geographic location: both to the Jews in and outside of said community.
It is time for post-geographic Judaism.
