Jews are required to gather together to worship. Coronavirus is pushing my synagogue to get creative

I remember a conversation my wife and I had about our son when he started high school and we were wondering if he would find community there, the kind that would be meaningful and satisfying. I checked on him one night as he was doing homework and I was surprised to find him with his two-monitor computer setup, playing an online game. He had a headset that looked like a pilot’s; his school laptop was on and his music played as he was fully engaged with at least three groups seemingly all at once.

I don’t know who he was talking to, and less how he was talking to all of them, but I closed the door, not worried about him finding community. I was more worried that I had come face-to-face — finally — with doing community in the 21st century and wondering if his version or mine would ultimately sustain.

Judaism understands community as feature of creation itself. Heaven and earth, sun and moon, fish and land animals all have counterparts. In one story of creation, after God creates man thinking that creation was finished and pretty good, God realizes that it is in fact not good for that human to be alone and creates another human so that both do not have to be alone. However, as good as that is, two does not make community.

Judaism understands that community is defined as 10 people — a minyan — the minimum number of people required for certain religious obligations, including worship. Jews are obligated to be in physical proximity to each other for prayer, including the worship leader. So in the age of COVID-19, if you are required not to be near people, how do communities do communal worship?

The simple answer is you lean heavily on technology and the ability to stream worship online or record worship and post it online later. At Temple Shalom we livestream our worship every week, adding online viewers to our onsite community. For the next few weeks, our worship team will be leading services, albeit to an empty sanctuary, as we livestream only.

Rather than thinking of those who tune in as “viewers” the word we use for anyone “being with us” is in fact “community.” That’s because while I cannot hear the participants respond, nor see them in their environment, I know they are there and I, of full faith, believe they are participating in their way and have become our new community.

Temple Shalom has also provided a part of the prayer book online, so if need be, worshippers can access those pages and follow along, and be as involved as possible. This digital version of community makes it possible for anyone, anywhere, in any time zone, to be welcomed into a community of worshippers in the same situation and to be joined by those who regularly join us via the web.

In this time of forced social distancing, the internet and the technology that allows for real-time connection is an absolute lifesaver.

It is hard to describe the strangeness and quiet of leading worship with no one physically present. Last week was the first time in my 25 years as a rabbi to worship without congregants in close physical proximity. I realized the power of the Torah’s description of creation not being good when we are alone, and yet, just knowing that people were there, sharing the melodies and prayers of our tradition, along with the prayers of their hearts, made the worship not just bearable but beautiful.

This virus, while forcing one version of community on us, has revealed an ancient truth: There are many ways of accessing the divine and there are many ways of accessing community. Wherever you are, you can be a part of community, something we need now, more than ever.