The Rise of Live Streaming High Holiday Services: A Blessing or a Challenge for Jewish Communities?

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jewish world, like many religious communities, witnessed a dramatic shift in how synagogue services were conducted. With social distancing measures and public health concerns, synagogues across the globe turned to technology to keep their congregations connected. Now, several years later, the impact of live streaming services, especially during the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, continues to reshape synagogue attendance patterns. Like most changes to synagogue life sparked by technological innovation in the 21st Century, there are both positives and negatives.

Traditionally, the High Holidays have been a time when Jewish community members, regardless of observance level throughout the year, attend synagogue to reflect, pray, and connect with others. However, since the onset of the pandemic, streaming services have emerged as an alternative to in-person High Holiday attendance. What began as a necessity has become an option that many Jewish individuals and families now prefer. This shift is particularly noticeable this year, as Rosh Hashanah falls on weekdays, providing a convenient way for people to “attend” services from their home or office without missing work.

New App Enhances Prayer During Pandemic

Prayer in Judaism is an interesting concept. While there is nothing inherently wrong with one praying by oneself, there is certainly a preference for communal prayer. Worshiping k’yachid, or individually, satisfies the Jewish obligation for daily prayer, but there are several sections of the prayer service that can only be done when a minyan (prayer quorum of ten people) is constituted.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the strong desire we have for communal worship has posed a challenge to clergy. Certainly, technology has solved many of the inherent problems that occur when it is impossible for community members to congregate in person due to health risks. We have seen how video conferencing apps like Zoom have become commonplace for group worship. But we have also seen examples of what happens when technology fails, as it did for dozens of congregations dependent on the synagogue website company Shul Cloud, whose servers failed on Yom Kippur, the most heavily trafficked day of the year for virtual synagogue prayer.

Atoning Over Zoom: How Video Technology Will Connect Jews During High Holy Days

At the beginning of 2020, most people hadn’t even heard of Zoom, the video-conferencing application. By early April of this year, we were all using Zoom for work meetings, the kids’ school, funerals, shivas, Passover seders, Shabbat services, and to connect with family members during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a rabbi, I have officiated over a dozen bar and bat mitzvah services and two baby naming ceremonies using Zoom over the past six months.

Zoom has become the new normal for us as we learn how to best connect with each other virtually during the pandemic. Thankfully, 21st-century startups like Zoom have made tech advances making virtual meetings even easier than in prior years. Over the summer, knowing the High Holy Day season might arrive before synagogues were able to re-open, rabbis and cantors around the world began preparing for what would become the first all-virtual Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur season.

Some congregations will offer hybrid services with some participants onsite, while most congregations will be fully virtual. There will also be synagogues that have pre-recorded the holiday services and some that will offer a live-stream with some pre-recorded segments. In order for Zoom to work well with the needs of clergy for the High Holy Days, my colleague Rabbi Joshua Heller has been in direct communication with the video conferencing company to urge them to make some changes to accommodate congregations. I spoke with Rabbi Heller, who authored the teshuvah (rabbinic position paper) allowing synagogues in the Conservative Movement to offer virtual services on the Sabbath, about the changes Zoom has made as well as what he sees as the future of virtual prayer services. Rabbi Heller has a degree in computer science from Harvard, was the first full-time director of the distance learning program at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and has a local Metro Detroit connection being married to Wendy Betel Heller, a native of West Bloomfield.

Learning New Tech Can Help Us Connect During Covid-19

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has expedited our adoption of new technology and forced us to put it to use to stay connected.

COVID-19 has affected people’s lives in tragic ways. The pandemic has also caused us to adjust to new realities like our kids being home from school for the final few months of the school year. There have been countless events canceled, including vacations, summer camp, concerts, fundraisers and sporting events. Our children have been disappointed because of commencements and graduation parties that could not take place.

However, there are “silver linings.” One of the unintended consequences of working at home for the past few months, in addition to increased family bonding time, has been an increased reliance on technology to stay connected. For many in our local community, that has been positive, allowing them to learn new skills and become more comfortable with virtual work technology. Some business owners have even questioned why they should continue to pay rent for their office if they can be just as efficient working from home.

“I saw firsthand how video conferencing technology like Google Meet was beneficial in enhancing the learning process,” said David Hack of Farmington Hills, whose son recently graduated from Hillel Day School.

“Watching my son use Google Meet and Zoom to have virtual interaction with his teachers prompted me to look into using Zoom to meet with my clients in my dental scrap business. When dental offices were closed at the end of March, I was able to connect with my clients and not miss any planned sales meetings. I’ve learned a lot lately about new ways of having meetings.”

For Jeff Dwoskin, a local standup comic from West Bloomfield, technology tools like social media and video conferencing have long been part of his communications arsenal. However, he learned new ways of utilizing mobile apps to shop for his family’s groceries.

“Our family went all in on Instacart. At the beginning of the governor’s ‘Stay At Home’ order, it was near impossible to get a time on Instacart, but I became an expert on figuring out the timing of placing our shopping orders online. We literally didn’t go anywhere for months and Instacart was our lifeline.” Dwoskin also used the time away from his office to launch his own podcast.

Risha Ring, president of the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan, said she has been grateful that the pandemic has forced her to push the organization to begin using technology like Zoom. “All of JHSM programming and our meetings (locally and throughout the state) are now on Zoom. That technology has saved our organization. In fact, now people from as far away as Iron Mountain and the Soo [Sault St. Marie], plus the whole west coast of the state, are now our partners in sharing Michigan’s Jewish history. That couldn’t have happened without our quick embrace of video conferencing.”

At Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, the entire catalog of programming and prayer services has become virtually accessible through Zoom. The congregation’s communications director, Susie Steinberg, explained that her unplanned move home from the synagogue office came with many challenges, but it has also expedited her dependence on the internet to do her job.

“I was thrown in headfirst to master new skills to effectively do the job at hand, which was to communicate virtually,” Steinberg said. “I learned how to fearlessly (and I started with great trepidation) use AnyDesk to remotely connect to my office computer, how to multi-task with only one computer screen and, most importantly, to Zoom.”

Steinberg added that now that the synagogue’s staff has moved back into the office, she and her colleagues have a “new bag of tricks, but, most importantly, a confidence that we can meet challenges and create new and often exciting outcomes.”

Some of the new technology adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic is specific to certain industries. Clio Software, a comprehensive case management tool for law firms, has been around for many years, but these months away from the brick-and-mortar office compelled attorney Jamie Ryke of Bloomfield Hills to become dependent on it. Ryke, a partner in the Probate Law Firm of Thav Ryke and Associates, said that he has fallen in love with Clio because it’s a “complete management system for lawyers. It has combined the most important things I use daily to be organized and successful, namely my calendar, email and billing software.”

Ryke added that he has never been as organized as he is now. “Learning to maximize the Clio application has made life easier. I also have appreciated being able to attend legal hearings from home on Zoom, since it means I don’t have to drive all over the state anymore.”

Technology will continue to make our lives more organized and allow us to feel closer to others, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has expedited our adoption of new technology and forced us to put it to use to stay connected.

Originally published in the Detroit Jewish News