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Jonathan Rosen's new book, "The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Two Worlds," is neither archaic nor high-tech.

It is about contradictions and commonalties, opposing forces and synchronicity, and bringing the past into the present.

And, as Rosen points out, although they are separated in time by almost 2,000 years, the Talmud and the Internet have a lot in common.

Both have their own versions of "home pages" from which readers or surfers are linked to a seemingly endless number of other sites. Each has its own "chat rooms": Those of the Talmud are dialogues that bridge centuries and those of the Internet span time and distance. And both encompass such an expansive and ever-growing body of information, making mastery impossible.

Rosen will read from his book at 12:30 p.m. Friday Oct. 27 at the Jewish Museum San Francisco, 121 Steuart St.

Through stories, personal and otherwise, Rosen explores what he calls an "anti-fundamentalist" philosophy, one in which there is neither a single truth nor absolute answers. In doing so Rosen has, in 133 pages, created his own Talmud-like work, one that cries out to be read in a book group — or at least with a companion to discuss it with. It's a book that both entertains and tweaks the intellect.

"We don't live in an either/or world," said Rosen in a telephone interview from his home in Manhattan. The creator of the Arts and Letters section of the Forward, which he edited for 10 years, Rosen is also the author of "Eve's Apple," a novel, and he is currently working on another novel.

He wants "The Talmud and the Internet" to illustrate that "inconsistent notions can live side by side." The book, which reads as if it just happened, was also planned out very carefully. Many images, such as broken glass, reappear with new twists.

There's Kristallnacht, a night of terrifying violence when German crowds took to the streets and broke the windows of Jewish-owned businesses and destroyed synagogues. Shortly after that Rosen's father escaped from Austria on a Kindertransport and was taken to Scotland. Although he expected to be reunited with his family, he never saw them again.

In another story, Rosen tells how when he was a child his father played a recording of an operatic aria for him. Although it wasn't in English and Rosen had no idea what the words meant, he knew from the melody that it was sad and he could make out the word "momma." Imagining that it had to do with a mother/son separation, Rosen became inconsolable. Even when it was turned off, he couldn't stop crying. It was only when his father broke the record in half that Rosen calmed down.

Then there was Rosen's wedding, which coincidentally was on Nov. 10, the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Beforehand, his father told him to imagine that, by breaking the glass at the end of the ceremony, all his unhappiness would be destroyed with it.

Although Rosen uses midrashic stories and the writings of others to explore his thesis, "The Talmud and the Internet" is largely a personal journey. It begins with the death of his maternal grandmother and ends shortly before the birth of his first child who, Rosen knows, will be a girl and will carry his grandmother's name into the future. His daughter was born a year ago.

Like many children of survivors, Rosen bares his father's scars and the Holocaust is a recurrent theme. Throughout the book he tries to reconcile the lives of his two grandmothers, one who died peacefully as an old woman surrounded by those who loved her, and the paternal grandmother he never knew, who died a violent death in the Holocaust as a relatively young woman.

"I wanted to create a space in which my two grandmothers could live together," said Rosen. "I was working out a fantasy about them. I had a hard time reclaiming the physical [paternal] grandmother who was a ghost to me. And the other became a ghost."

To do this Rosen looked to the world of the dead in Homer's "Odyssey." It is there that Odysseus finds his mother, who he learns has died during his absence. And it is there that Rosen imagines his grandmothers.

There are no shortage of literary references in "The Talmud and the Internet." Rosen calls in everyone from the ancient Jewish historian Josephus to Yochanan ben Zakkai, who was smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin just before the destruction of the Second Temple and started the writing of the Talmud, to Marcel Proust and Allen Ginsberg.