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os as anah >> Jews in the digital age

Rosh Hashanah

2014
5775

An App For That:
Scapegoat Your Sins

_■■•01.

,

A

With Love
The Chaben Family
Lisa, Steve, Sami, Riley & Luke

I

kT er h as ant

May the coming year be filled with
health and happiness for all our family and friends.
Ii'Shanah Tovah!

I

Sheri and David Jaffa
Eden, Kevin, Skylar and Zachary Elbinger
Sabrina, Brian, Jadyn, Kendyl and Reese Kaufman

N.77 —

731 i al I t,

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May the coming year be filled with
health and happiness for all my family and friends.
VShanah Tovah!

Mary Must

e

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46 September 25 • 2014

s Temple Beth El's Rabbi
Mark Miller has settled
into his new job at the
Bloomfield Township Reform congre-
gation, he has been looking for inno-
vative ways to cause
both excitement
and a renaissance
in Jewish learning
for his congregants.
Back at Beth Israel,
Miller's previous
congregation in
Rabbi Mark
Houston, Texas, the
Miller
rabbi became a fan
of G-dcast.com .
G-dcast is an online nonprofit new
media studio and Internet organi-
zation based in San Francisco that
provides Jewish children and adults
with the chance to learn the basics
of Jewish education with
no barriers to entry. Over
the years, G-dcast has pro-
duced more than 100 ani-
mated shorts and mobile
apps that make Jewish
stories come to life. In its
effort to build Jewish lit-
eracy, G-dcast works with
educators and rabbis to
create innovative curricu-
lum, interactive workshops
and inspiring leadership in
new media.
Last year, G-dcast
launched a mobile app called eScape-
goat, which encouraged users to
engage in deeper Jewish learning
and to prepare for Yom Kippur by
offloading their sins to a virtual goat.
The idea was to create a very modern
(mobile app) way to copy the ancient
repentance ritual (scapegoat). In
anticipation of this year's Yom Kippur
holiday, G-dcast brought the app back
along with Mini Goats. These are
local mini-apps that let smaller com-
munities virtually re-enact this ritual
for a new, high-tech learning and
community connection.
"Since I've has been involved with
G-dcast from nearly the beginning,
I always get their notices about new
stories, videos and apps, but this one
stood out immediately, given the real-
ity of translating Yom Kippur for a
modern audience," Miller explained.
"I love taking ancient, anachronis-
tic, out-of-date texts or rituals and
finding new meaning in them. The
scapegoat is a perfect example, and
if nothing else, I hope people will see

eScapegoat

is roaming the Internet collecting sins
before Yom Kippur.

START

that this ancient ritual can still add
something to their High Holy Day
experience or even be, dare I say it,
fun!"
Miller has a number of holiday-
related apps on his phone, and he
says he will use some of them in a
variety of settings, but especially in
Temple Beth El's religious school and
its flourishing youth group. The rabbi
uses technology every day
— from checking Hebrew
calendar dates to quick
searches on a particular
text or idea, to sharing and
learning with colleagues
across the country, to very
specific educational tools
that were not available even
a few years ago.
With the Mini Goats
feature of the eScapegoat
app, Miller believes that
when we spend the time to
explain repentance and the
very practical benefits it can have in
strengthening families and building
communities, people want to take
part in it.
"But it is intentionally a difficult
process:' he said. "I think this app
will lower the barrier to this particu-
lar Jewish observance, and encourage
some people to try it out."
G-dcast founder and executive
director Sarah Lefton said, "Despite
high synagogue attendance on Yom
Kippur, literacy of the scapegoat story
in Leviticus is very low. This program
is an easily accessible, fun way to
engage people in thinking through
the importance of personal and com-
munal atonement rituals:'
Last year, G-dcast's eScapegoat
mobile app had 50,000 users who
learned the fascinating, rarely dis-
cussed story of the scapegoat, submit-
ted anonymous sins, and then read
the sins of others in an interactive
interface that integrates social media
and real-world discussion. What's
impressive about the number of users