It occurred to me this evening that we bloggers are also commentators, whether in our own posts or in the comments sections of our blog and those of others. We are not unlike the famous commentators of Jewish history: Rashi, Rashbah, Onkeles, etc. These men extracted from the main messages of Torah and Talmud to post their own thoughts on the matter at hand. We do that, as well.
We do it to blog strangers, we do it to blog friends. And if we're lucky, sometimes some other blogger cites our words or gives a link to our message.
Many of us think through our comments before writing them, while others take them lightly and toss them off easily. Like the famous rabbis and Talmudic and rabbinical students of yesteryear who were called upon to respond to Halachic questions, we are sometimes consulted upon to give opinions, rationales and elaborations. In essence, we, like the great thinkers, are providing "responsa".
Perhaps we can take that a step further. Will our responsa, our blogs in essence, be discovered in great warehouses in Cairo, in "genizahs" hundreds of years from now? If so, what great words of wisdom and commentaries will you be remembered for?
