Judaism in the Digital Age

At the most recent CCAR - Central Conference of American Rabbis - convention in March, I attended two sessions on synagogues and technology - Judaism on the web. Congregations are blogging (as I am now) and podcasting and videocasting services and sermons, and have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. With technology and the internet, we’re doing outreach in a whole new way - CyberJudaism. http://reformjudaismmag.org/summer_2009/ And, the future (as I predicted in a High Holiday sermon in 1998) is here! One of the sessions at the CCAR was on “Visual T’filah” , putting the siddur up on screens in the sanctuary. www.visualtefillah.com One of the first things I have participated in as part of sabbatical is an audio and sound production workshop. While I’ve spent years using microphones and sound equipment, both while speaking as a rabbi, and while singing and playing the guitar, I’ve always wanted to know more about audio production and recording. And as the rabbinate has changed, sound for worship is becoming even more important. So, the workshop I attended recently, a Sound for Worship workshop presented by How-To-Sound, is on the cutting edge of what we need to know now. Our instructor, Mike Sokol, is a professional audio engineer who has done sound recording, and live sound engineering for concerts, rock musicians, churches, and the Obama inauguration, and he was terrific! The workshop was extremely informative and answered all of my questions, and some I didn’t even know I had, about sound systems, mixing consoles, microphone inputs and speaker outputs. We learned about how to make the right choices for mics, where to place them for different instruments, and how to place monitors and speakers. Each of us had our own mixing console to work with and had the opportunity to play sound engineer and mix our own output - it’s much more complicated when you have to think about hearing each instrumentalist or vocalist individually in the mix! To get an idea of this, put on some headphones and listen to a favorite recording of a band that you like and try to hear each instrument individually, then think about the choices the sound engineer made that helped to give the band its unique sound. Being on the other side of the sound equipment as a speaker/musician/singer/performer, it gave me a lot to think about and to listen for, both in terms of live sound and recording/podcasting.