In Praise of Nerdiness
For the Tacoma News Tribune
June 2004

I think I should have shown Craig more respect.  He was a classmate of mine in high school – a big, loafy kid who never looked you in the eyes when he spoke.  Craig had a pimply face, wore rumpled clothes, and had a voice that seemed eternally pubescent.  He was a B-/C+ student, and he often sat alone at lunch.

But Craig did know a lot about the weather.  In fact, I believe that Craig knew everything there was to know about the weather – everything.  He knew the difference between a warm front and an occluded front, he knew what made humidity relative, and he could distinguish a cumulus cloud from a cumulonimbus one.  Additionally, Craig seemed to know what the weather was going to be like at every moment of every day – not just the local weather, mind you, but the national and international weather, as well.

Craig, in other words, was a nerd – a weather nerd.

Thank goodness!  We all needed his help.  “Craig, we’re going on a picnic this weekend – would Saturday or Sunday be better?”  “Craig, I’m taking my girlfriend out to Lovers Point tonight, and I’m trying to figure out what music to bring.  Should I plan to have Don McLean singing to us about the ‘Starry, Starry Night,’ or to have Eddie Rabbit tell us how he ‘Love[s] a Rainy Night’?”  “Craig, long sleeves or short tomorrow?” 

Yes, Craig was a nerd, but his “nerditude” served us all very, very well.

Before proceeding, a definition may help.  The “nerd-word” has been understood in many different ways, most commonly as a person who is socially inept.  However, a more precise definition would describe a nerd as someone deeply and passionately interested in things that most of the rest of us simply don’t care about.  It is the very depth of this passion that often makes it difficult to converse with a nerd – his extensive knowledge brings him (or her) to places most of us will never reach, and the chasm separating us can therefore be insurmountable. 

Nerd-dom is a quality very few of us aspire to these days.  At a time when we have mountains of data at our fingertips, when information is available to us as it never was before, many of us want to be renaissance men and women.  We want to be well-rounded, to know and be able to converse with anyone about anything at all.  Often, we don’t want to know a lot about any one thing; we prefer knowing a little about a lot of things, instead.

Plumbing the depth of knowledge and wisdom? No thanks!  We’d rather just skim vast amounts of surface, and leave the depths to the nerds.  They love it there.  When it comes right down to it, we don’t really want to bother understanding occluded fronts and the meaning of cumulonimbus, we’re too busy surfing web.  Don’t bother us with the details - just tell us what to wear tomorrow, Craig, and we’ll be perfectly happy.

It is easy to understand, then, why the nerds of the world – these people we so readily dismiss as misfits and losers – are so vitally important.  Without them, we could never fully understand or appreciate our world.  Without them, the richness of life would remain off-limits to us all.  Without them, we surfers would never get beneath the surface.

That is why I, myself, strive for nerdiosity.  Indeed, I have committed my life, in many ways, to being a religion nerd – a Jewish religion nerd, to be more precise.

Let’s face it.  These days, the embrace of religion tends to be nerdiness par excellence.  Our world seems to love sneering at authority; it makes a sport out of humiliating people on “Reality TV,” and prides itself on its newfound ability to click people out of our lives in Cyberspace.  Religion, on the other hand, demands a respect for authority, it has us treat others with kindness and dignity, and it calls us to reconcile ourselves with others rather than simply ignore them.  In times like these, then, how could a religious person be anything but a nerd?

I, however, will choose the depths that religion calls me to explore over the frivolity that so often characterizes modern life any day!   More specifically, I’ll choose the Jewish tradition and it’s own, particular path as my own.  It may not seem cool to the Church-Bashing/American Idol/computer chatroom crowd, but I’m afraid that is their problem, not mine.

Yes, I should have shown Craig more respect.  Indeed, given what much of modern life has become, I have chosen to become a nerd, too.  And I’m proud of it.

***

This is the final monthly column I will write for the TNT.  Now that my work at Temple Beth El is about to conclude, it has come time for me to move on to other pursuits.  I hope that my nerdiness – my passionate commitment to religion in general and to Judaism in particular – has served you well, dear readers.  In the years I have written this column, I have tried to share a bit of the richness of Judaism with you, as well as some of my own thoughts about the value religion can have in modern life.  I have tried to point out that there is indeed such a thing as bad religion, and that its antidote is not “no-religion,” but rather good religion.  I have tried to show you that Judaism and the Jewish people are worth taking a look at not because of, but despite, the fact that some people hate us. I have attempted to share the gratitude that many of my fellow Jews and I feel toward the Tacoma/Pierce County community, and to demonstrate the vitality of Jewish life in our community today.  I have tried to teach that cultural diversity can enrich a community, while moral and ethical diversity, if tolerated, can destroy it.  I have tried to show that, in a world committed to achieving quick-fix happiness, the pursuit of holiness is far more significant.  My work will prove to be a success only to the extent that I have succeeded in conveying these and other ideas to you.

It is said that religion exists to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.  I pray that my words have risen to that noble challenge, and I thank the editors of this newspaper, the members of Temple Beth El, and you for honoring me with the opportunity to do just that.