Even more different
Apr. 10th, 2020 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo like most other Jews I took part in virtual seders this year. It was very emotional and mostly good.
In less than a month, it's been amazing how Jewish communities have adapted to being mostly virtual. My home synagogue went from frowning on use of electronics at all on Shabbat and festivals, to unanimous agreement that we're keeping up the livestreaming once we're allowed back in our physical building, and the most vocal objectors to tech have started leading virtual services. Basically, the first time we did it, with great trepidation, we saw the faces of former members who have moved away, even to other continents, and of disabled and chronically ill members who are only variably able to attend shul in person. And suddenly, we all viscerally understood that using telecomms for religious purposes and to be together as a community is honoring the sabbath, not breaking it.
The other factor is that Zoom is good enough. It's not perfect, but the sound and picture quality, and the interoperability across devices, and the usability for people who aren't really tech savvy, are all good enough that you can just get on and have your virtual gathering. Yes, I know there are privacy and security concerns, but honestly I'm a bit impatient with hearing about those problems from people who live most of their online life in the Google empire. (People who are very strictly Free software only I have more sympathy for, but even then, if you're not providing tech support for people using elderly i-devices who can barely use a web browser, or at least working on products that are actually usable by people who haven't been programming since they could read, then my patience is still limited.)
In less than a month, we've gone from, stick a web cam in front of a service and hope, to people actually creating liturgy for distributed video call services. Even including fake Zoom-bombing by 'Pharaoh' refusing to let the people go, or 'Elijah'. What is still missing is the ritual around the Torah scrolls, and anything more than very limited music; my community pride themselves on their beautiful spontaneous harmonies and that's not really happening. But still, it's been amazing, people are praying together from their homes.
So, I agreed with my family that we would do a Zoom-based seder this year (I'm not quite sure about the coinage 'Zeder'). And planning the liturgy was a bit chaotic, but it's kind of always chaotic. We also all realized that actually, a virtual seder has a rather higher limit on how many people can join together, so instead of having two separate occasions for my family of origin and my family of choice, we all piled in to a huge seder, nine households, and my dad's sister and his oldest friend from uni who sometimes used to join us when we were kids. There was this moment when I was trying to introduce everybody who might not know each other, and I wanted to make it clear that my partners are my partners without getting derailed into a complicated poly coming out thing, and I said something kind of clumsy about usually being a family but less so at the moment under quarantine, and my lovely gf said, no, we're just as much family now, only in different physical places. There's a lot of sadness about not being able to gather in person for the one day in the year when we always manage a family reunion no matter what, but that moment went a long way to make up for it.
I struggled a bit with finding an online Hagaddah. I mean, there are a zillion options, but I found few that met my requirements of being relatively easy to use while you also have your fellow guests in their little video grid in another window, containing all the traditional text in a clear layout that distinguishes it from commentary, and not being intolerably sexist. But we made up seder plates as best as we could, with ingenious substitutions in some houses and the family's heirloom china in others. And mostly we could judge whose turn it was to speak, though it's cognitively extremely taxing compared to being at the same table, and we managed to read the essential words and have some discussions, and Judith (who has been learning Hebrew for about one term) sang the four questions. And we sort of managed to hide and hunt for the afikomen. I hadn't been sure about maintaining the Zoom connection while we were eating, but actually about half the houses dropped out and the rest of us remained and managed to chat and catch up and argue politics and even complete the remainder of a mostly finished Times jumbo crossword over Zoom. Very few aspects of a proper seder meal were lacking!
The thing about a virtual seder is, we finished the main ritual at 10, and clearing up for 2 is much quicker than clearing up for 20, and we didn't have to travel home via spending an hour standing in the doorway talking about how we really must get going, so actually we managed quite an early night. And then the morning service, which I basically never make it to, was online rather than in town, so I showed up. Then second night, my Stoke community completely spontaneously organized a virtual community seder, with no input at all from me. Someone else put together a virtual Hagaddah by combining pages from various sources and making a kind of slide-slow, and got everybody to take part in the reading, and did fun stuff for kids (another pupil from the same Hebrew class where I'm teaching my partners' kid did the four questions) the community just showed up and got on with it. A few stayed away because it's an Orthodox community and some followed the Ashkenazi rabbinate's ruling that Zoom seders are forbidden, but it was lovely to see at least some of my people.
And my sister posted me her amazing Pesach cakes, and she and some other people rallied round to make sure I had matzah, and somehow, it's the most terrible Pesach but it's also a really wonderful Pesach. I am loving reading of everybody else's improvised seders, or their first times leading instead of deferring to their elders, or people who took advantage of the virtual seder to be able to be with both sets of inlaws or even relatives who normally can't stand eachother, or the people who are normally too secular but decided that this year they wanted to mark the occasion. And lots lots lots of people have pointed out that it couldn't be more in the spirit of Pesach that we're all improvising what sanctity we can while we huddle from danger. I was particularly moved byjjhunter's haiku and all the responses:
In less than a month, it's been amazing how Jewish communities have adapted to being mostly virtual. My home synagogue went from frowning on use of electronics at all on Shabbat and festivals, to unanimous agreement that we're keeping up the livestreaming once we're allowed back in our physical building, and the most vocal objectors to tech have started leading virtual services. Basically, the first time we did it, with great trepidation, we saw the faces of former members who have moved away, even to other continents, and of disabled and chronically ill members who are only variably able to attend shul in person. And suddenly, we all viscerally understood that using telecomms for religious purposes and to be together as a community is honoring the sabbath, not breaking it.
The other factor is that Zoom is good enough. It's not perfect, but the sound and picture quality, and the interoperability across devices, and the usability for people who aren't really tech savvy, are all good enough that you can just get on and have your virtual gathering. Yes, I know there are privacy and security concerns, but honestly I'm a bit impatient with hearing about those problems from people who live most of their online life in the Google empire. (People who are very strictly Free software only I have more sympathy for, but even then, if you're not providing tech support for people using elderly i-devices who can barely use a web browser, or at least working on products that are actually usable by people who haven't been programming since they could read, then my patience is still limited.)
In less than a month, we've gone from, stick a web cam in front of a service and hope, to people actually creating liturgy for distributed video call services. Even including fake Zoom-bombing by 'Pharaoh' refusing to let the people go, or 'Elijah'. What is still missing is the ritual around the Torah scrolls, and anything more than very limited music; my community pride themselves on their beautiful spontaneous harmonies and that's not really happening. But still, it's been amazing, people are praying together from their homes.
So, I agreed with my family that we would do a Zoom-based seder this year (I'm not quite sure about the coinage 'Zeder'). And planning the liturgy was a bit chaotic, but it's kind of always chaotic. We also all realized that actually, a virtual seder has a rather higher limit on how many people can join together, so instead of having two separate occasions for my family of origin and my family of choice, we all piled in to a huge seder, nine households, and my dad's sister and his oldest friend from uni who sometimes used to join us when we were kids. There was this moment when I was trying to introduce everybody who might not know each other, and I wanted to make it clear that my partners are my partners without getting derailed into a complicated poly coming out thing, and I said something kind of clumsy about usually being a family but less so at the moment under quarantine, and my lovely gf said, no, we're just as much family now, only in different physical places. There's a lot of sadness about not being able to gather in person for the one day in the year when we always manage a family reunion no matter what, but that moment went a long way to make up for it.
I struggled a bit with finding an online Hagaddah. I mean, there are a zillion options, but I found few that met my requirements of being relatively easy to use while you also have your fellow guests in their little video grid in another window, containing all the traditional text in a clear layout that distinguishes it from commentary, and not being intolerably sexist. But we made up seder plates as best as we could, with ingenious substitutions in some houses and the family's heirloom china in others. And mostly we could judge whose turn it was to speak, though it's cognitively extremely taxing compared to being at the same table, and we managed to read the essential words and have some discussions, and Judith (who has been learning Hebrew for about one term) sang the four questions. And we sort of managed to hide and hunt for the afikomen. I hadn't been sure about maintaining the Zoom connection while we were eating, but actually about half the houses dropped out and the rest of us remained and managed to chat and catch up and argue politics and even complete the remainder of a mostly finished Times jumbo crossword over Zoom. Very few aspects of a proper seder meal were lacking!
The thing about a virtual seder is, we finished the main ritual at 10, and clearing up for 2 is much quicker than clearing up for 20, and we didn't have to travel home via spending an hour standing in the doorway talking about how we really must get going, so actually we managed quite an early night. And then the morning service, which I basically never make it to, was online rather than in town, so I showed up. Then second night, my Stoke community completely spontaneously organized a virtual community seder, with no input at all from me. Someone else put together a virtual Hagaddah by combining pages from various sources and making a kind of slide-slow, and got everybody to take part in the reading, and did fun stuff for kids (another pupil from the same Hebrew class where I'm teaching my partners' kid did the four questions) the community just showed up and got on with it. A few stayed away because it's an Orthodox community and some followed the Ashkenazi rabbinate's ruling that Zoom seders are forbidden, but it was lovely to see at least some of my people.
And my sister posted me her amazing Pesach cakes, and she and some other people rallied round to make sure I had matzah, and somehow, it's the most terrible Pesach but it's also a really wonderful Pesach. I am loving reading of everybody else's improvised seders, or their first times leading instead of deferring to their elders, or people who took advantage of the virtual seder to be able to be with both sets of inlaws or even relatives who normally can't stand eachother, or the people who are normally too secular but decided that this year they wanted to mark the occasion. And lots lots lots of people have pointed out that it couldn't be more in the spirit of Pesach that we're all improvising what sanctity we can while we huddle from danger. I was particularly moved by
jjhunter's haiku and all the responses: may it pass overAlso R' Debbie Young-Somers beautiful meditation on Dayenu:
our elders our sick our home
everyone held safe
Perhaps over zoom we will find companionship, or perhaps in the unusual quietness we will create space for the ‘still small voice’. It will be a Passover like no other, but this too shall Pass, and we will have done enough.Chag sameach to all who celebrate, and extra love to all my Christian friends whose Easter is going to be even weirder than my Pesach has been.
