For many Jews, raised with a strong sense of cultural identity but lacking a formal religious education, accessing the lessons and wisdom of their heritage can seem daunting. The essential texts of Judaism, the Torah, the Midrash, the Talmud, conform to stylistic conventions thousands of years old that make the texts frustrating, if not impossible, to decipher for the casual reader.

But the Internet has enabled people to offer their own commentary on religious texts, building a new collective wisdom — an open source approach to religion.

For the past seven months, Slate.com editor David Plotz has been leading the “idiosyncratic” Blogging the Bible project. “This is a book which shaped my life, the religion I believe in, but I’ve never read it for myself,” Plotz told NewAssignment.Net. Calling himself a “not very observant Jew,” Plotz started with chapters of Genesis, reading the text for the first time as an adult. He then summarizes the passage online, adds his own personal thoughts and observations, and invites his readers to respond.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Plotz said. “Every time I put something up, I get this flood of e-mails about it.” While Plotz braced himself for hate mail, he estimates that more than 90 percent of the feedback is positive, from people eager to engage in an earnest discussion of biblical interpretation. Not only has Blogging the Bible become one of Slate’s more popular features, it’s bringing in traffic from outside the usual Slate readership. Blogs serving evangelical Christians, conservatives, and orthodox Jews all link to Plotz.

The biggest problem Blogging the Bible faces is it’s so popular Plotz doesn’t have time to stay on top of the e-mail that comes in, with thousands of messages still sitting unread on Slate’s servers. “It should be more interactive than it is, that’s its biggest shortcoming,” Plotz said. “The readers know a lot more than I do. Since I don’t even have time to read all of their e-mails, there’s a knowledge loss. And that’s a shame.”

A more ambitious, interactive, truly open-source interpretation of Judaism’s texts was the dream of Douglas Rushkoff, the creator behind the now-shuttered Open Source Judaism project. The idea was to open up the religion to disaffected Jews and use new media technologies to reinterpret the faith in a way accessible and relevant in the 21st century. “The entrance into Judaism is not a demonstration of faith,” Rushkoff said. “It’s the bar mitzvah. It’s that you can read the Torah and have a discussion about it with other adults.”

Rushkoff quickly attracted sponsors from among Jewish philanthropies who hoped he could help revitalize Jewish religious practice. Almost as quickly, under the weight of Rushkoff’s contentious personality, the self-described “iconoclast” attracted a lot of controversy. “Judaism was invented not to become a religion, but to have a corrosive effect on religion,” Rushkoff said. His book, originally to be titled Open Source Judaism, hit print with the far more provocative title Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism.

To some, fighting words. Rushkoff’s followers and those from more traditional interpretations traded insults and accused each other of betraying Judaism’s historic roots. The Internet bulletin boards set up to explore and discuss Jewish practice degenerated into flame wars. Representatives from Judaism’s splinter factions tried to hijack the debate and advocate for their own beliefs.

While Plotz wished he could figure out how to make Blogging the Bible more interactive, he anticipated the trap Rushkoff’s open-source religion idea fell into. “The problem with a successful wiki is the problem Wikipedia has,” Plotz said. “The popular entries are so contentious.”

Given the experiences of both Plotz and Rushkoff, it’s apparent there’s both a tremendous demand for and pool of willing contributors to a new open-source Judaism project. But unlike debugging an errant Firefox module, in religion there are no correct answers, only points of view. For Jews online, how to balance the promises with the pitfalls of open-source religion remains very much an open question.

Eric Krangel is a student in the journalism program at Columbia University. His work has appeared in numerous papers including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Sun.