Here are a few fun morsels to leaven liven up the holiday!

• Tweet the Exodus – fun, creative, and a cool model for role playing using Twitter, this is a season highlight! Check it out, even if you’ve never tweeted before – just follow along. As they say, “Relive the Exodus from Egypt, one tweet at a time. The story comes to life between March 16-29.” Check out the recent article, “Passover Meets Twitter,” in the Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2010.
  
• Projecting Freedom: Cinematic Projections of the Haggadah – 14 short videos corresponding to the individual steps of the Haggadah, offering visual commentary on the Passover story; a project of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning and the Covenant Foundation; just launched – look for it!
• Creative Seders – crowd source ideas on a Google doc! Take it out for a spin and add your own!
  
• Legacy Heritage’s Smart Board Jewish Educational Database: Pesach Lessons – teacher submitted, downloadable resources for use with SmartBoards
• Torah Aura’s Passover resources – games, activities, and resources for the holiday
  
• iMah Nishtanah – iPhone/ iPod touch app by Behrman House
• BabagaNewz’s Pesach Central – resources galore for kids, teachers, and parents
• MyJewishLearning: Passover – articles, recipes, seder ideas; don’t miss out on their Best Seder Ever contest – the deadline is March 22, 5pm ET – can’t wait to see the entries!
  
• Jacob Richman’s Hot List of Passover Sites – Jacob’s growing list of holiday resources, including links to games and fun stuff for kids of all ages
• JVibe’s Counting of the (H)Omer Calendar - a staple. a classic. a calendar.
• The Open Source Haggadah Project – create your own customized Haggadah
  
• The Four Questions in Klingon – an oldie but goodie, and yes, continues to prove that there is something for everyone
  

Not to be forgotten, of course, is last season’s fave, Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah. Alas, the link seems to be itself departed – anyone have a current one?

Any other faves out there? Share yours!

Such success signals the grand potential for Jewish organizations to use apps to reach their constituents in a new way: right in the palm of their hand.

Graphic from Mila-4-Phone App

“Apps are what websites were to an organization ten years ago,” Daniel Brenner, executive director of Birthright Israel NEXT, said. “Back then, we used to joke “’you are not real until you are virtual.’”

Brenner makes a good point. In the web of the 1990s, websites were static and reference-focused. Today, the web is increasingly more fast-paced and social-focused thanks to the ubiquity of user generated content and the rise of social networking sites.

As apps bring the social web to phones and other mobile devices, organizations are pressed to deliver valued-added content that is more than just reference material.

“Apps challenge organizations to show how ongoing, updated information from the organization is relevant to users,” Brenner said.

For Birthright Israel NEXT, the key to compelling content was listening to its target base, a population that was expressing interest in returning to Israel and learning Hebrew.

“We view the iPhone app as having two mission related functions – one educational and one community building,” Brenner said. “One element of our mission is to deepen the connections that young adults have to Israel – Hebrew learning certainly does just that.”

“But the real power of the app is that it is building a community of over three thousand young adults who share an interest in Hebrew language. Since we are involved in promoting ulpanim in ten cities and in holding ‘beit cafe’ events where Americans can meet Israeli peers and work on their Hebrew, the iPhone app serves as a magnet for folks with a shared interest and has encouraged people to meet others who want to learn Hebrew.”

While the app may not be for every Birthright Israel alumni, it has attracted a large, focused following with more than 3,000 downloads from 49 countries.

“Niche followings are the best type of followings,” Brenner said. “Knowing that over 3,000 young adults who are for the most part unaffiliated Jews and who did not go to Jewish day school all want to learn Hebrew is a very good thing.”

Seeing a Jewish organization invest in a new technology and using it to reach its base in a 21^st century model – transcending space, time and place – is definitely a very good thing.

So good that other Jewish organizations are taking notice. For instance, Mazon has an iPhone app as does the Cleveland Jewish Federation, which launched Jewish Cleveland in March.

Will apps be the new “websites” of the 2010s? Are you or your Jewish organization thinking about creating an app? Sound off in our comments.

Video of Mila-4-Phone in Action

To learn more about Mila-4-Phone check it out here. If you don’t have an iPhone, or iPod touch, you can still join in on the mobile- Hebrew-learning fun with Birthright Israel NEXT’s Hebrew Word-A-Day Text Messaging program. Just text “Hebrew” to 41411 to get started.

Last week BBYO announced the launch of what I believe is an exciting, inventive tool available to engage teens in a meaningful Shabbat experience: Build a Prayer.  As a free, online tool the site is designed to connect youth with prayer and Shabbat like never before by allowing them to build and customize their own service.

At BBYO, I constantly see teens, advisors and staff members using unique spaces and creativity to offer relevant, powerful Shabbat services, a unique challenge since most teens have only experience services within their synagogue. This challenge is only made more difficult by the fact that most teens aren’t comfortable in a traditional siddur – they don’t know where services start and end, what to include, or what is “safe” to leave out.

To meet that need (and often times to save money), these worship services are typically guided by a teen-designed collection of songs, poetry and prayers that is compiled through an effort of photocopying, cutting and pasting together old song sheets and prayer book passages. As an organization, we saw the need to provide Jewish teens with an accessible place to explore prayer and its meanings – doing it online also happens to save some glue.

What makes this site so exciting is that it brings thousands-of-years-old prayers into a modern day realm that teens relate to. It is streamlined and easy to use. In a few clicks of a button, teens have a complete service in front of them in which they feel some much needed connections. While not every teen feels comfortable finding their way in a traditional siddur, Build a Prayer allows teens to put together a basic Shabbat service in a space they can easily navigate.

The site is designed for teens, educators, camp counselors, youth group advisors, JCC professionals, chavurah leaders – basically, anyone who is interested in putting together a Shabbat service in a formal or informal setting.  The site allows Hebrew, English and/or transliterated text to be compiled with one’s own pictures, prayers or poetry toward the creation of a custom “Prayer Service” which can be printed and used anywhere.

With help from www.myjewishlearning.org and a series of videos, users can learn more about the traditions and tunes behind specific prayers.  Additionally, a content library holds creative elements from individual prayer services as they are created.  Because this is an online resource, people can collaborate on the development of each service and comment on them once they are placed in the Build a Prayer library.

While recent studies show that participation in traditional religious experiences decline during the teen years, the desire to connect spiritually on one’s own terms remains strong.  Build a Prayer is another resource we are offering the Jewish community as a way to better connect with Jewish teens. Organizations looking to reach the teen audience should look at this as a tool to literally bring prayer to life.

Matt Grossman is the Executive Director of BBYO.  He began his career at Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. Matt is also a member of the Darim Online board of directors.  Matt currently lives in Washington, DC where he works at BBYO’s international headquarters.

Kudos to the Lippman Kanfer Institute at JESNA for launching their JE3 project, Technology and Jewish Education: A Revolution in the Making!  [Full disclosure: your friends over here at Darim were involved in its development]

The project revolves around the question: “What does it means to ‘do’ Jewish education in a 21st century digital world?” The JE3 site features a core narrative that explores various aspects of the integration of technology-facilitated: visions of Jewish learning, the transformation of learning and teaching, examples from the field, concerns and challenges.   Along with this context-setting narrative, the site provides a platform for articles from leading Jewish educators.

Want to get in on the conversation? Read, reflect, respond… submit materials, add comments to articles,  tweet using the hashtag #jed21…. C’mon over….!

What can be said though is that these new devices are not a passing fad. Some hopeful analysts claim that the iPad and Kindle, by offering new format possibilities for books, newspapers and magazines, might just save the media industry. E-books, for example, are currently available for 125,000 titles on Amazon and make up 6 percent of the site’s total sales in books, including 48 percent of all titles available in both formats. But forecasters project sales to grow exponentially in the near future to the point that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has proclaimed that after a successful 500-year run, the book’s time has come.

For the People of the Book, a people not generally known for its early entrance into new technology opportunities, it’s time to start envisioning how things will change as we become the People of the E-book.

• How might the Jewish community increase Jewish literacy as more religious and educational resources become digitized in e-formats, and thus become more easily disseminated and accessed?
• Will prayer become more individualized as siddurs (prayer books) become available to everyone and can be carried without adding any extra bulk to a briefcase or book bag?
• Will learning of Jewish texts attract new students as Torah and Talmud become available in new formats?
• Will Jewish life become less expensive by saving on the purchase of books at religious schools and day schools?
• How might synagogues and JCCs build relationships beyond their walls as sermons, newsletters and blog entries are sent to the palm of constituents’ hands?
• Will all Jews need a handheld device, like new students at some universities, in order to fully participate in all the community has to offer?

We want to hear from you! How else might the Jewish world change as it enters the digital realm? What’s your organization or community doing to interact in the digital world?

In the “old days” one hallmark of a “professional” photographer was that the photog was never without a camera. By that standard, today just about all of us are professionals.

Cell phone cameras are ubiquitous. Now we go through our days visually armed, as it were, often immediately emailing friends the resulting photo reconnaissance of our lives. We post these mega-pixel bits and bytes of our lives in our Facebook albums. We tweet them to whoever will follow. We collect them in vast numbers on our computers. Sometimes they are dark, blurry rectangles that assert simply that we exist. Sometimes they surprise us with unspeakable depth, transforming even a random moment into a powerful enduring memory. Sometimes we make prints of them so they can become our companions, or even turn them into hardcover, realio-trulio coffee-table books all about us.

What does it all mean? Have we all become self-obsessed users of the latest must-have tech-tools for noting, recording and sharing our lives? Or – think of this – have we, perhaps, all become historians newly in procession of cutting-edge tools for making meaning. Using these tools is it possible that we can now translate our busy, sometimes chaotic lives into the illustrated narratives that, upon reflection, help us understand who we are, where we fit and what we mean.

Here is a small example of what I am getting at. I have spent about an equal number of years in my life working as a Jewish educator and as a photographer. Recently, I have begun to photograph bar/bat mitzvahs – but with what I believe is an interesting twist that incorporates the sensibilities of both.

It is not just about a party. And it is certainly not about lining up the family and at my prompt encouraging them to, “Say cheese.” In fact, I do as little directing as possible. Just like you can with your cell cameras at the ready, I am after stories from real life. I begin months before photographing the child studying, working with the rabbi and cantor, documenting the mitzvah project, the party planning, the suit/dress shopping, anything related to any aspect of what is involved in a 21st Century bar/bat mitzvah – taking pictures that ultimately give me the raw material to tell a much bigger story. Now a trusted confidant, I interview the child exploring what they make of all the attention being heaped upon them, their Torah reading, their expectations, and their fears.  I talk to the parents about their child, their aims for the event, their Jewish identities and what they hope to pass on to their children. Then I weave a narrative – words and pictures – and I put them in a book – a personal history book that can play an important role in helping a family define and express the meaning of the experience.

Bat Mitzvah – Images by David Frank

And, here is something to consider – even the very fact of photographing makes meaning. Remember, I’m not talking about a “Say cheese” grab-shot. But I’m also not suggesting anything about the quality of the camera you might use. I’m talking about the quality of paying a particular kind of attention that has the capacity to suggest to your young subject that THESE aspects of your process (the study, the talks with the rabbi, the time spent alone drilling words of Torah, etc.) are significant and valuable. And the resulting photographs then can take their rightful place.

And the photographs make the memories. That’s why we take pictures. We grab from the swift flow of undifferentiated life a few split seconds of our lives and say, “Stop! Just now I want you to be this age, with these people, in this place – forever.” Such pictures, especially at peek moments can help to define who we are.

Consider the photo documentation of your own life. How your memories are sparked when you peruse an old album. “Look at my big hair!” “Those are some crazy lapels!” “Look how beautiful Mom was when she was young.” What if the interior monologue could continue… “Here I am before my Bat Mitzvah. I’m so proud that…” or “Wow, this was the first time I touched a Torah.” or “Here I am in the rabbi’s study…” Pie in the sky? Perhaps, but without the photographic jolts to memory over the years the event loses its specificity and its power to shape identity. Identity = authentic experiences, sensitively documented and well remembered. My own, now adult, daughter is still awed by the photos that remind her that all those people had come to see HER.

At a recent Bat Mitzvah the family stood on the bima with the rabbi reciting the Havdalah blessings. They tasted the wine, smelled the spices, illuminated their fingertips – but missed, until they saw the photograph, the moment when a daughter, caught up in her thoughts and feelings, rested her head on her mothers shoulder. It lasted for a second. Went unnoticed. But the photograph now has great familial power. The photograph creates the memory. The memory is inexorably tied to this very intimate and Jewish moment.

You have the tools. You have the digital means to enter the rush of ones and zeros and use it to stop time, to write histories, to interpret the present in service of the future, to fill the histories of those around you with the memories of Jewish moments. And these moments make meaning. They illustrate the narratives through which we come to know who we are.

Further resources:

The Meaning of Family Photographs by Charles Williams

http://homepage.mac.com/williamszone/dostal/research/meaning.html

Candid Photography, and the Meaning of “Real-Life” by Len Bernstein

http://www.lenbernstein.com/Pages/candid.html

Reading Photographs to Write With Meaning and Purpose, Grades 4–12 by Leigh Van Horn

http://www.reading.org/General/Publications/Books/bk612.aspx?mode=redirect

Social Media And The New Meaning of Photographs

http://understandinggraphics.com/brainy/social-media-and-the-new-meaning-of-photographs/

Family Photographs: Content, Meaning and Effect by Julia Hirsch

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Photographs-Content-Meaning-Effect/dp/0195028899/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265908169&sr=8-6

David Frank was a photojournalist and graphics editor at various newspapers in Michigan before becoming a Jewish educator and the Director of Conferences at CAJE.  He is a storyteller, always trying to tell the public story, the back story, the whole story – your story.  He makes art out of both the simple and the sublime moments in life.  He lives in New Jersey. You can learn more about his photography at http://www.davidfrankphoto.com

The latest initiative from NJOP (National Jewish Outreach Project) is a Hebrew literacy initiative, with Twitter and social media as its hook.

The project is an outgrowth of NJOP’s popular Read Hebrew America program, said NJOP publicist Ilya Welfeld, founded with the idea of reaching people who aren’t inclined to join a community class – the Jewish Tweets social media brand was a perfect background, providing a little kitsch and allowing people to learn Hebrew in “bite-sized pieces.”

“Right away, almost 200 people officially registered,” Welfeld said, noting that these are just the people who proactively want to be receiving everything directly to them. But on a daily basis, several hundred people are participating however they want. The intent was to create learning that was “at your own pace, in your own space.”

Twebrew School provides three free learning options: Tweetups, video lessons, and newsletter signup; and if you already know Hebrew, you can sign up to be a Twebrew School teacher .  Check out your Twebrew twoptions at this twebsite http://www.twebrewschool.org.

Have you joined the ranks of Twebrew School teachers? Do you know someone who’s using NJOP’s Twebrew School program in their local community? Share your experiences and feedback with us here.

Haven’t seen the Twebrew School videos yet? Begin your education with Lessons 1 & 2.

This post is an expanded version of the original, which appeared on Esther’s blog, My Urban Kvetch.

Darim will work with up to 3 individuals through coaching and mentoring over a five month Fellowship.  Check out details and the link to the application form here: http://bit.ly/defspring.

Meet our current Fellows:

• Joshua Altman, Temple Sholom, Greenwich, CT – Josh is creating an online collaborative newspaper / blog with his religious school students.
• Lynne Lieberman, Friedman Commission for Jewish Education, West Palm Beach, FL – Lynne is developing an online professional development course on differentiated learning for synagogue educators.
• Rachel Sesser, Temple Sholom of West Essex, Cedar Grove, NJ – Rachel is creating an online community resource for students and their families to engage in classroom and extracurricular activities.
• Viki Shayna, Temple Beth Emeth, Ann Arbor, MI – Viki is developing an extension of a community collaborative project that will bring together American and Israeli families online.

Get your creative juices flowing this holiday weekend!  Applications are due Friday, December 4, 2009.  Questions? Give us a shout at learningnetwork@darimonline.org.

Helpful hint: we posted a preview of the application on the Fellows information page so you can prepare your longer responses in advance and cut and paste them into the online application form.

The Darim Educator Fellows program is made possible by a generous grant from the Covenant Foundation.

We invite you to try a new approach to Torah study, community building, and perhaps even sermon writing in your congregation, The Social Sermon,  an idea comes from acknowledging three things:

1) That many people can’t get to the synagogue for a lunch or evening Torah study class, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t interested;
2) That people want the social experience of learning, not just passive reading or listening to a lecture, and that connection through learning enriches a local community; and
3) Social technologies can be a wonderful tool to enrich and augment Torah learning in local communities.

Imagine a Saturday morning sermon that’s the work of not only your rabbi, but you as well. Let’s take it a step further: what if it weren’t just you and your rabbi, but also your fellow congregants, young and old, those new to the community and the stalwarts of your city?  By the time your rabbi delivers his Shabbat remarks, he or she could be drawing inspiration from, or even representing the discussion of, hundreds of his congregants!

What does The Social Sermon look like? At the beginning of the week a Rabbi posts a question on his or her blog, or on Twitter with a particular hashtag (e.g. #CBSSS for Congregation Beth Shalom Social Sermon), or as a Facebook post on the congregation’s Page.   The first post would describe a theme of the parasha, or link to some text, and at the end, pose a question.

As comments and responses start to be posted, the Rabbi then facilitates an ongoing conversation through the week — responding regularly with insight, text, links, answers to questions, and more questions to guide the discussion.

By the end of the week, several things will have happened:

• New people are engaged in Torah study.  Likely a portion of the online participants are a demographic that doesn’t often come to mid-day or evenig adult education classes. (On-site classes – adult and youth – can also participate);
• Participants will have formed new relationships through the online discussion, perhaps following each other on Twitter, friending each other on Facebook, etc. which leads to ambient awareness, thus strengthening your community;
• The Rabbi will have a better understand of what aspects of the parasha resonate with the community, and be able to design a Shabbat sermon that is the most relevant for the congregation, and will have ideas, quotes, context to make the sermon even more rich; and
• More people may show up for Shabbat services, feeling more educated, connected and like they have some ownership over the sermon that week.

And for those that missed the service, they could read it the next day when the rabbi posts the sermon back on the blog or web site, with a link on Twitter and/or Facebook.

Interested?  Use the SocialSermon tag on this blog to find posts about the Social Sermon, and for case studies and guest posts from Rabbis and educators who are doing it.  Follow #socialsermon on Twitter for updates, links to these blog posts, and to connect with others who are doing it.  Join us on Facebook to be connected others who are doing Social Sermons and get important news.

Feel free to adapt the concept — a confirmation class could do this throughout the week between class meetings, a youth group could do it with their adviser or a parent facilitator.  Please report back and let us know how it’s going, and what you’re doing.  Please let us know if we can help you at any stage – leave a comment here, or any other space mentioned above.

Want more “hand holding”?  Darim offers hourly consulting, and we are working with interested Social Sermoners to find funding from a donor or Federation small grants program to work with a group of Rabbis in your local community.  Holler if you’d like more information.

Ready, Set…. Social Sermon!

[T]he web – potentially at least – empowers our members and democratizes our synagogues. The synagogue is the grassroots address of the Jewish world, and the web gives us an instrument to involve and include Jews as never before. Are our synagogues doing great things in this area? Absolutely. Are we making the most of this potential? Not even close.

Yoffie’s challenge to congregations is to be applauded. Too many synagogues and Jewish schools have an attitude towards tech that’s generations (a relative term, I know) behind their congregants and students who all have Facebook accounts, use Twitter, and are never more than an arm’s length from their Blackberries and iPhones. But the movement’s approach to addressing this issue — an organized program to train lay leaders to create and maintain congregational blogs — is only a first step. The Reform movement has an incredible opportunity on its hands, a chance to take the next steps and to get a lot more serious about using technology to build and strengthen communities.

Four suggestions for maximizing this moment:

1. Congregations should form committees (or task forces) to develop thoughtful strategies for using technology to increase the efficacy of communication. Rabbi Yoffie is right that blogs are a great way for synagogue members to connect online. But there are lots of other technologies — social networking, microblogging, podcasting, mass texting — that also might be useful to synagogues. And there are those congregations for whom blogging might not be the best fit. Every synagogue should gather their most technologically savvy members (and some socially savvy “connectors”, if we’re going to take Malcolm Gladwell’s advice) to make these sort of decisions for the community. Should the temple have a Facebook page, and if so what kinds of things should be posted there? If the synagogue has a Twitter account, who should be charged with maintaining it? And how often should they tweet? The URJ could be indispensible in providing consultants and experts to help congregations get on this path.

2. Technology can help Reform congregations do an even better job of running organizations that live up to the highest values of the movement. Imagine if a synagogue lived up to its commitment to environmentalism by going totally paper-free. The synagogue staff uses Google Docs to collaborate on projects. Rabbis project Temple announcements (and other administrivia) up on a screen during services so that programs don’t need to be printed every week. Instead of spending lots of paper and money on a newsletter, members receive a monthly email newsletter, as well as frequent updates on Facebook and Twitter. Lots of congregations are using all these technologies, and they’re preventing lots of paper waste in the process. The Union can support congregations new to these technologies by teaching professionals to use these tools, empowering congregants with tech skills to be leaders in their communities, and by pairing temples at the beginning of this journey with those who’ve already found success.

3. Technology is an important part of the future of Jewish education. I’m not talking about educational video games. I’m talking about using tools to help learners connect deeply to Jewish text, about helping schools better communicate with parents, about using inexpensive video conferencing to bring diverse teachers to isolated Jewish communities. Education is a central part of a synagogue’s mission, and we need to be asking new questions about how learning is changing. How can we utilize new technologies like Google Wave, Twitter, and YouTube to allow for collaborative (hevruta for the new generation!) learning? How can the internet help us engage (and empower!) parents and families in new ways? How can we use technology to open up the world of Jewish education to better integrate the arts, science, and communication?

Thirty years ago, innovative Jewish educators were using filmstrips, slideshows, and video to bring Torah to life. Now, equally innovative educators are using Flash animation, social media, and hypertextuality to accomplish those same goals. The URJ should nurture and support these sorts of projects and help to bring those tools to congregations and their learners.

4. Technology is an excellent opportunity for collaboration. In the few days before the URJ Biennial, a group of educators gathered for a pre-conference symposium on Jewish identity. One of the teachers at that gathering was Professor Ari Kelman who shared research that suggests that the current generation of young, involved Jews (many of whom are “digital natives,” if you don’t mind sweeping generalizations) are redefining affiliation by resisting joining a single organization, and rather participating in lots of diverse parts of Jewish life. For these Jews, no single institution is the center of Jewish life.

Institutions that pay attention to thinkers like Kelman realize that successful Jewish organizations of the future will be marked by cooperation and collaboration. They also know that efficient and financially responsible Jewish organizations are the ones that don’t insist on re-inventing the wheel but rather seek out partner organizations with different types of expertise. To truly move forward to empower member congregations to embrace a 21^st-Century social-media-savvy technologically-engaged existence, the Union should seek out organizations, educators, clergy, innovators, experts, academics and thinkers who can help congregations do their best work.

Perfect example: Darim Online has lots of experience helping Jewish organizations effectively utilize social media technology (including blogs!), and that expertise could really help (and in fact already is helping) Reform congregations look at new ways of communicating. Instead of trying to invent their own wheel, the URJ should seek out partners who’ve already invented pretty good wheels.

Let’s be clear: The Reform movement is taking unprecedented steps forward. Rabbi Yoffie’s sermon and the related URJ initiatives launched this week mark the first time a major movement is encouraging and supporting member congregations to take this trend seriously. This is an important moment, and it would be a shame to waste it.

Josh Mason-Barkin, director of school services at Torah Aura Productions, is a member of a Reform congregation and a graduate of HUC-JIR. He blogs at tapbb.com. You can find his twitter feed at www.twitter.com/barkinj. He frequently contributes to a conversation about Jewish Education in the 21st century on Twitter under the hashtag #jed21