 The encyclopedia of our age is called Wikipedia. It's an online encyclopedia. And one of the features of the Wikipedia culture is that every single reader, every single person has a right to contribute to the discussion. And all opinions are held to be of equal value. On Wikipedia, the assertions of a high school biology student are given equal weight to the writings of a senior tenured professor specializing in that subject at a leading university graduate school program. One is not considered to be more important or more significant than the other. Now, a radical example of this was provided by Charles Seif in his book, Virtual Unreality, which was published in 2014. And the example he gives is that someone posted a claim that the protagonist in one of Philip Roth's novels was based upon a character in a deceased New York Times literary critic who was a deceased New York Times literary critic. That was the assertion of one of the contributors to Wikipedia article on the writings of Philip Roth. Roth found out about this assertion and sent in his very, very personal statement that as the author of my own writings, that's not the case. My writings in this book were not based upon this literary critic from the New York Times. Rather, the character was based upon a sociology professor at Princeton University. Now, you would think that that would settle the argument. However, the admins of Wikipedia were not swayed by the direct clarification from Philip Roth himself. And so when it came to the thought processes of this very, very famous author, the anonymous editor with no verifiable credentials, just submitting their own point of view, was given as much credibility as the author of the novel himself. Now, the intellectual culture of Judaism is characterized by a tremendous amount of openness and equal access. Every single person is able to study our writings and to comment on them, to write commentaries, to question prior commentaries. It's a very open and accessible literature that we have. Everyone is able to take part in the conversation. And they do. Even the greatest sages encourage their students to question everything they say and to probe very deeply the literature of Judaism, both ancient and modern. And we know that the most respected students in any Jewish academy are those students who are able to propose the best questions. The best students are not the ones that are able to propose answers to questions. Anyone can give an answer to a question that's been raised. But to discover the question, to find an ambiguity or to find a contradiction, or to find a problem in the text, that's not always so easy. So the one that discovers the problem, the one that discovers the question, is regarded as the greatest students usually. However, Judaism was never a radical democracy where every opinion was given equal weight. That is not the case. Although scholars can be questioned, the ultimate rulings of Judaism, the ultimate decisions of Jewish law, were never put up for popular vote among the people, among the population at large. This was certainly not the kind of system that God himself promoted. We know that when Moses was being overwhelmed by questions from the Jewish people, his father-in-law Yisro proposed that he delegate some of his responsibilities to judges who would be able to relieve Moses of some of his burden. But they didn't just pick people to help Moses randomly off the street. We're told in the book of Exodus chapter 18, verse 21, Moses is told, discern among the people for men of accomplishment, God fearing men, men of truth. These had to be people who were imminently qualified to render decisions and to decide issues of Jewish law that Moses was going to delegate to them. It wasn't something that any person off the street was able to decide. We know that in the book of Judges, we're told that God was very, very upset when the Jewish people were living as an anarchy society with no leadership, and each person did that which was right in their own eyes. The book of Judges criticizes this. It's not the way things are supposed to be. There are supposed to be leaders, qualified leaders, people who are given the responsibility by God to make decisions, ultimate decisions in Judaism. When God himself instructed Moses how toro law is to be adjudicated, again, it was not left up to any self-proclaimed authority. God specifically delegated this responsibility to the leading judges in each generation. It had to be recognized leading judges. We find this in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 17 and in the second Chronicles chapter 19. This should not really come as any great surprise. Our modern society operates in much the same way. Today, if you practice law in virtually any place of North America without a license, you can be prosecuted. You can't just call yourself a lawyer and represent clients in court unless you received a recognized training in some kind of a law school. If you practice medicine without a license, you can be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You can't just say, my mother always wanted me to be a doctor and I look like a doctor and I feel like a doctor. I've read a couple of books and I'm going to practice medicine. That's not how our society works. And the truth is that Jewish law is much more complex than our civil legal systems. A person can go to, I'm not sure how long it takes here in Canada, but in the United States law school is three years. And so a person can become a qualified lawyer within three years and that is certainly not the case in Judaism. Jewish legal authorities are dealing with a much broader legal system than our North American legal systems. The primary sources are not written in English. They're written in Aramaic and in Hebrew. The texts themselves are very difficult and obscure. And it takes many decades to become a qualified person able to decide issues of Jewish law. There are many complicated issues that come up in our time in Jewish law. Difficult issues. One of those issues that I'm faced with regularly are people who feel that they have some kind of Jewish background, that they feel they descend from Jewish people, that they think in their background there was some Jewish parenthood going back many generations, and they feel Jewish and they want to be Jewish. And they often assert that based upon their own feelings they should have the status legally of being a Jew. And the truth is that that's not how it works. Judaism does not base such a weighty issue, such as personal status. Personal status issues are not based upon how people feel. This question, like any other question, has to be studied carefully by people that are duly qualified to rule on this kind of sensitive and difficult issue. And Judaism therefore has almost nothing in common with the culture of Wikipedia.