Growing up my family was somewhat religious.  We celebrated all of the Jewish holidays, went to temple, I became Bar Mitzvah and was Confirmed.  We did most of the things a typical Jewish American family does.

Like many young adults, I suspect, once I moved away from home I became less observant. I didn’t belong to a synagogue and lived far enough away from my parents that coming home for the holidays wasn’t always possible.

Once I got married and started a family of my own though, my wife and I decided it would be important for both ourselves and our children to reconnect.  We joined a local synagogue and began to bring it back into our lives.

My kids started in Sunday school and we began going to services as a family.

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Rarely do I lead a service anymore, (ANY service!) during which at least one cellphone doesn’t go off. It can be a Bar Mitzvah… CELL RINGS! It can be a wedding… CELL RINGS! Or it could even be a funeral… CELL RINGS!

I guess it is understandable, after all who would want to miss that all-important call during worship. :sarcasm:

This, however, is a very different story about technology and worship…

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photo credit: Ozyman

Technology can be a lot of fun. It can keep us connected with one another, it can transform our work habits, and it can help us become more organized and efficient.

It can do all these things, but of all the great uses of technology the one that stands as most important is this: that it can help us solve the problems life throws at us.

Dan is a good example of some of the ways technology can help overcome otherwise challenging issues. Back in January he wrote a post entitled A Crash Course in One-Handed Blogging. Dan had just undergone surgery to fuse one of his wrists after it had been destroyed by rheumatoid arthritis. With one arm tightly wrapped and constantly elevated, voice recognition software allowed him to keep blogging and writing for his rabbinic works (and for Gear Diary), even as he recovered from a surgery that was far more extensive than he expected.

Dan continues to do a great deal of his writing using various voice recognition solutions, and he will be introducing a new series about the subject here on Gear Diary later this week. But this story isn’t about VR, it is about another technology that has helped Dan deal with some of the after-effects of RA and his surgery; it’s about a technology that I have long advocated.

With his permission, here is the story…

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Today’s post in our on-going series “Technology Meets Tradition” has to do with creating connections using technology in ways that weren’t available just a few years ago.

On the occasion of one’s 13th birthday it is common for a young Jewish teen to become a bar or bat mitzvah. The young person goes through a period of study and then leads the worship service and both reads and teaches from the Torah. It is a powerful moment made all the more special because during it the young person is surrounded by family and friends. That, however, can be a double-edged sword for it also raises the sadness and longing for family members who are not able to be present whether they are deceased or just too ill to travel. That was the case this post Saturday as one of our young people became a Bat Mitzvah. She desperately wanted her grandfather to be at the the service but he was not physically able to make the trip.

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