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By DEBRA RUBIN<\/p>\n
(JTA) — Don\u2019t turn off your phone — it\u2019s not an announcement typically heard as religious services begin.\u00a0But congregants at a Miami Beach High Holidays service for young adults will be asked to use their cellphones to send text messages to the rabbi during parts of the Rosh Hashanah evening service this year.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Amy Morrison of Reform\u2019s Temple Beth Sholom will be leading the free service for The Tribe, a semi-autonomous pluralistic group, at a nearby Florida Jewish Museum. Morrison, iPad in hand, plans to stand before a 5-foot screen and ask congregants to respond at various points in the service — texting, for example, whom they would like to forgive, how they would like to be remembered and their own transgressions. She expects more than 250 people to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can interact with the rabbi and they\u2019ll drive the content of the service — they\u2019ll see each other\u2019s comments and can react to them,\u201d said Rebecca Needler Dinar, The Tribe\u2019s director. \u201cWe don\u2019t call it a service; we call it an experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dinar and Morrison also have prepared a special prayerbook for the service that includes quotes from an array of sources — from Rashi and the prophet Amos to novelist Louisa May Alcott, author Maya Angelou, rapper P. Diddy, the musical the \u201cLion King\u201d and the movie \u201cKung Fu Panda.\u201d<\/p>\n
The unusual service is just one way that technology and social media are changing Jewish observances in certain communities. While an increasing number of synagogues are offering real-time Internet streaming of services for those unable or unwilling to participate in person, some shuls have begun to incorporate social media into the congregational experience.<\/p>\n
At Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, Calif., also a Reform temple, Rabbi Paul Kipnes has tentative plans to encourage congregants with smartphones to use Facebook to reflect on the shofar after it is blown for the second time during the service.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaimonides says, \u2018Awake sleepers.\u2019 Most of us hear the shofar and continue sleeping through it,”\u00a0Kipnes said. “It\u2019s a show, not an alarm clock. I\u2019m saying OK, everybody, sit up, wake up, reflect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given that so much of the High Holidays liturgy is in the collective — \u201cWe have sinned\u201d — Kipnes says it is appropriate for congregants to share their thoughts collectively during the service.\u00a0\u201cPrayer,\u201d he said, \u201cis not supposed to be a spectator sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
A youth group at Temple Shalom in Newton, Mass., also used texting last year in its Rosh Hashanah service. Scott Kroll, the Reform synagogue\u2019s youth educator at the time, brought the idea to the teens from a digital media program he had taught at Kutz Camp in Warwick, N.Y. The campers incorporated texting into the session\u2019s final evening services in conjunction with the Avinu Malkeinu prayer, expressing their hopes for the coming year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigh school kids are never told to take out their cellphones and use them during a service,\u201d Kroll said. \u201cI thought it may be a little gimmicky, but it ended up being very meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New Year’s wishes were projected on a screen in front of the chapel, \u201callowing them to create collective prayer,\u201d Kroll said.\u00a0\u201cMobile phones and texting is part of teenagers\u2019 everyday life,\u201d he said. \u201cBeing able to incorporate that into a holiday service is not odd to them,\u201d but rather helped \u201cenhance their prayer experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial media for teens and kids and young adults — and increasingly for older adults — is a way of communicating and staying in touch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Texting during services might not become common, but Kroll says he thinks \u201cthe norm will be integrating new forms of communications and digital media into services, particularly in Reform. It\u2019s obvious that most Conservative and Orthodox services would not embrace this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tribe, which is funded by Synagogue 3000\u2019s Next Dor, Temple Beth Sholom, the Woldenberg Foundation and other local groups, is composed of Jews across denominations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vision of outreach is reaching people where they are,\u201d Dinar said. \u201cThis is the language of that generation.\u201d<\/p>\n