Jewish Congregation Celebrates High Holidays Online

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The Shofar, a ram's horn, is played at Rosh Hashanah to remind Jews to turn their hearts to repentance. But it can also be played on a phone.

Yes, there is an app for the Jewish High Holidays, which start at sundown Wednesday.

New media and faith aren't always a perfect pair, but many religious groups have embraced technology.

"We don't use technology for its own sake; we use it because it makes sense in the framework of what we're already doing," says Rabbi Laura Baum, who leads the brick and mortar congregation Beth Adam in Cincinnati and ourjewishcommunity.org in the online world.

Baum and her associate, Rabbi Robert Barr, perform separate weekly Shabbat services for the two groups. For the high holidays, Beth Adam's services are streamed live online.

Orthodox and Conservative Jews traditionally eschew technology in religious services. Barr says that the community's Reform and humanist tradition is important to its willingness to go online.

"The technology in it has certain values," he says, "and the value of the internet is one that's about empowerment, creativity, boldness, breaking down stereotypes, breaking down barriers. And our Jewish philosophy fits very well with that. Not everyone's does."

Rachel Wagner is the author of Godwired: Religion, Ritual, and Virtual Reality, due out in November. She says religious groups face common challenges online.

"If I'm on a website and I push click to make an offering or push click to meditate or perform a prayer, then there's a way in which a click has become a ritual activity. And for some people that's too easy. Right so those people who are concerned about online worship, they often say what happens to community?"

Online services, however, can also build community, especially through chatting online.

"We've reached over 200,000 people," Barr says. "We're touching lots of lives. There are people for whom the online congregational setting has great meaning and import."

Judaism may be an ancient faith, but at least for some, technology allows it to adapt to a modern world.