Making It Real

Kids today are practically born with screens in their hands, and the dopamine rush and shorter attention spans that come from absorbing information from digital content makes it nearly impossible for schools with the old frontal method of teaching to compete.
But what if there were a way to bridge the gap between here-to-stay virtual reality and Torah content, creating a more interactive and exciting way to learn? 

The moment the headset covers my eyes and ears, the floor drops out beneath me.

I’m standing (or floating) in an endless dark universe. A scroll of Hebrew text — the first words of Bereishis — move across the void. A stentorian voice intones, “In the beginning, G-d created the Heavens and the Earth….”

As the narrator relates the story of Creation, the universe in which I find myself suspended begins to change. It fills with water, then burgeoning vegetation, then swarming fish and birds, glowing celestial bodies, and elephants and giraffes and lions.

Finally — in a shower of sparks and clumps of earth — an enormous Adam Harishon emerges ponderously from the rolling hills.

This isn’t just learning about the events of Bereishis. It’s being immersed in them.

Before I know it, I’ve moved to a new place. Now I’m in the Beis Hamikdash. Everything here is golden, the ambiance sublime. Kohanim are going about their duties. There’s a large menorah, that I awkwardly manage to light using the handsets I’m holding. A voice instructs me that poles need to be positioned on top of the Aron, so I use the handsets to gingerly move them on top (it takes a few tries to get it right).

These tasks accomplished, my headset comes off and I return to reality, still a little dizzy from my travels back in time. Aaron Wolko, the founder of TorahVR (Torah Virtual Reality) is grinning. “Did you like it?” he asks in his unmistakable Australian accent.

This was my first experience with virtual reality. “It’s incredible,” I answer.

“This,” Aaron says, “is the way I wish I’d have been able to learn Torah as a kid. So now my goal is to let Jewish kids experience Torah this way.”

My travels in space and time have taken place from a chair in Aaron’s office, in a refurbished storefront on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights. It has all the accoutrements of a high tech company: freshly ground coffee, health-compatible snacks in baskets for the taking, rows of desks with monitors, and a high-speed bicycle mounted on the wall.

Aaron, a casually dressed entrepreneur with a reddish beard, is the founder of Nivra, the company producing TorahVR. He’s a Chabad chassid with a long history in finance and business startups before delving into the world of Jewish virtual reality. By age 13, Aaron was investing his bar mitzvah money in the stock market. By age 21 he was working for a hedge fund, and soon moved into the dizzying world of venture capital, making more money than most people make in a   lifetime.

But money isn’ t everything, and he found himself pulled to do more. So, a few years ago, Aaron left the finance world to focus on chinuch for the 21st century.