Mandy Patinkin at JFS Luncheon

I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Patinkin speak at the Jewish Family Service luncheon here in Colorado. He was a joy to listen to and he sang a little bit of a song a the end in English and Yiddish. Here are my tweets from the event and the sound bite at the end. 

 

 

 

oops... break the bread to come back together

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mandy Patinkin Singing at JFS

 

Jewish Family Service of Colorado Video

Religiously Observant Athletes

It is fascinating to hear the stories already coming out of the Olympics, especially regarding religiously observant athletes.In particular, the intersection of Ramadan and the Olympics this year.The Islamic calendar is a purely lunar one. What this means is, their months float around on the secular, Gregorian calendar. Thus the month in which they must fast, Ramadan, falls in different seasons. This can become an advantage when the days are short and so are the fasts.Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The Five Pillars are:

  1. Shahadah - the declaration of faith.
  2. Salat - praying five times a day.
  3. Zakat - giving charity.
  4. Sawm - fasting during Ramadan.
  5. Hajj - pilgrimage to Mecca.

To me, these five pillars are the 'biggies' in Islam, like we have our 'biggies' in Judaism. If I had to identify them, I would probably say they are: Fasting on Yom Kippur, lighting shabbat candles, saying the Sh'ma, giving tzedakah (charity), and remembering our journey out of Egypt (aka Passover). I think it's nice to have the five most important actions/ideals laid out for you like that.Anyway, back to Ramadan. So this year, the month long fast falls during the Olympics. Many athletes have had to make the decision to either fast and (most likely) have their performance suffer OR delay their fast. Muslims who observe Ramadan are allowed to eat before daybreak or after nightfall so many wake up before the sun to get some sustenance in... but that won't work for athletes who burn the calories so fast and need hydration.As a religiously observant Jew, I love learning how other religiously observant people in other religions struggle with and find the balance of their religion and the secular world. It's been fascinating reading!What are your thoughts on religious observance 'interfering' in secular life?The Hunger Games: Muslim Athletes Observe Ramadan at London OlympicsRamadan and the Olympics: to fast or not to fast?

L'Havdil - This Week's Separation and New Year's

Tomorrow night we will celebrate two important milestones. They both have a similar shoresh (root) but they are different.Tomorrow night, at approx 72 minutes past sunset (click here to get the exact time), we will say baruch hamavdil ben kodesh l'chol... and a few other brachot by the light of a braided candle. We will be doing havdallah. We will be creating a separation between the sacred and the everyday. On Shabbis (Shabbat, Sabbath) we hold our actions to a higher standard than usual. Whether that means you don't drive or cook or turn on light or tear toilet paper... or it means that you spend time with your family and chill out... no matter how you do it, you make Shabbat a special time. (And if you don't, think about trying it sometime. Start simple and slow... maybe choose to not spend any money or do things that you feel are work or maybe... shocking... turn off your cell phone. Trying it for one 26 hour period. It will change your life, it changed mine!) And at the end of this special time, at the end of Shabbat, we must have a ritual to remind us that we can take the (w)holy feeling that we got from that time forward into our week but the week has a different feel to it. Havdallah creates a distinction. It derives from the same root as l'havdil which means to create a separation between something incredible and something ordinary.So shortly after havdalah (okay, a few hours later), we will ring in the secular new year. The Jewish calendar already flipped years back at Rosh Hashanah but the Gregorian calendar will change tomorrow night at midnight. You kinda can't avoid the celebrations. The parties all night long, the goofy glasses that say 2012, the drunks, Dick Clark on tv despite his health... It's fun, it's secular yes, but it's still fun. This is another time l'havdil... to separate. Not from something incredible to something ordinary but from something that has become routine and maybe even boring to a promise of something new and better and extraordinary.Baruch hamavdil ben kodesh l'chol - Blessed are you who creates a separation between sacred and common. Perhaps at midnight tomorrow night we should say baruch hamavdil ben chol l'kodesh or even baruch hamavdil ben zakain l'hadash -blessed are you who creates a separation between old and new - or even... baruch hamavdil ben  h'avar uvain ha'atid - Blessed are you who created a separation between the past and the future.May you all be blessed in this up coming new year. See you in 2012!

As The Candles Gutter Out

Today is the last day of Chanukah. Last night we lit our last candles of this holiday.With all the hype that led up to Chanukah, it's hard to imagine that it is over. I can't image what it feels like for Christians who have (I feel) an even bigger build up to their holiday and then only one night and one day Xmas.With all this holiday spirit and war on Xmas talk... what are we, as Jews to feel when we look at our lit chanukiah?Our chanukiah brings light into the world. We are obligated to light it in a window or so it can be seen from the street. Why? Well it came from a time when we could not do that. When we were forced to hide who we were for fear of persecution or death. Since we no longer live in that fear, since we have the freedom to worship as we want here, we show the world that we are Jews by lighting our menorot in the window. So the menorah, or chanukiah, is like a symbol of our freedom, right? A shining (literally) example of our right to worship. Our Chanukah lights shout from our homes "WE ARE JEWS!"Well, we aren't always about shouting... shouting isn't always the right reaction, correct? Sometimes an outward symbol also teaches us something internally. So we light these candles every night and we gather as families. In my family, at least, we tell stories of Chanukahs past. We sing the same songs that my father sung with his parents (laughing in the same spots at our terrible voices). The candles burn with the warmth of family and love and history and tradition. They are lit in a safe space, for them (on tin foil to make sure they don't burn down the house, says my father and to keep wax off the furniture, says my moms), and a safe space for us. A space where you can be you and you will be loved and accepted and held in the warm arms of generations gone before.But that's how I feel communally and with my family, what about me... personally... what does the chanukiah bring into MY life? So the word Chanukah come from the Hebrew verb - חנך - chanach meaning 'to dedicate.' Funny that this time of year falls within proximity to the secular new year, which is a time for resolutions... or rededicating yourself to ideals and efforts.So as I watched the candles gutter out last night for the last time this year, I thought to myself... to what shall I rededicate myself this year? Well, dear readers, here is my list.

Talia Hava's Chanukah Rededication List:

  1. Blogging. I will be better about blogging more regularly, really.
    1. Subhead - Writing in general. I would really love to publish more work.
  2. Photography. My camera and I have had a chilly relationship lately. I plan on warming that up soon!
  3. Me. I get bogged down in all the work and other stuff that I forget about me. That means exercising and doing things I enjoy (see numbers 1 & 2 above).
  4. Volunteering and philanthropic work. I miss it. When I was in school, in my sorority, that was a focus. Let's get back out and help people!
  5. Sticking to a budget. I'm trying, I really am... but numbers isn't my strong suit!
  6. Dating. A very wise rebbetzin once told me, "Talia, if you want to get married you have to make dating your full time job." Ugh, but you were right! Here goes...
  7. Learn how to crochet. Seriously! I've learned twice and I keep forgetting!
  8. Start an Etsy store with my friend Amanda, fill it with our art, my photography, her knitting, and other goodies, and sell lots of fun stuff!
  9. STUDY MORE TORAH AND HALACHA! Very key. I miss the regular learning I was doing in Israel. Gotta get going again!

Well, those are mine... what does your rededication list look like? May you all have nothing but Mazal, Bracha, Hatzlacha, Briut, v'Shalom for the (secular) new year! (Definition: luck, blessing, success, health, and peace)

New Facebook Timeline

So Facebook is finally rolling out the new Timeline feature for personal pages. It's very exciting and I am sure will piss off a few people. The people over at Facebook have a nice tutorial here - Introducing Timeline - on how it all works.So I moved my profile over today and one of the neat features is the cover photo. In addition to your profile picture, which stays as your avatar around the site, you have a large photo at the top. It's a neat feature that I have been playing with but I think it will still need some tweaking from the Facebook folks. You can't resize your photo in Facebook, just drag it to move it. So if it is a large picture you will end up cutting some of the picture off... which led me to edit some pictures to fit nicely. Another challenge is that it seems that no matter how high quality your picture is, it still comes out a bit grainy and pixelated.Okay, back to the size issue. So the size for the cover photo is 840 x 310 pixels. It's short and long but you can do it. I made a few examples of how to utilize this new feature. Currently, I have one up for the holidays... in fact, it is the image I used for my holiday cards. I made another to promote my blog. I made two more from cool pictures that I took in Israel. Some people have been getting very crafty with theirs and maybe I will try that out as well.Here is a great blog for Photoshop users on how to layout your cover photo and integrate your profile picture - TechXT .Also Mashable offers a great tutorial and ideas on this new option as well - Mashable.Below are a few of my new cover photos for Facebook. If you want to get Timeline before the major roll out on December 22, find a friend with it and it gives you the option to switch over. Do be aware, Timeline does change some of the privacy settings. Check the activity log and other places for your settings and ENJOY!

HackerPocalypse 2011 - The Lesson

If you would like to start this journey with me by reading part one, HackerPocalypse 2011 - The Story, please feel free.So yesterday, I told you the emotional parts, the sadness and sorrow of the losing 10+ years of email and memories. Today I am going to talk technical. If this has happened to you, here are the things you need to know.First of all, though I am a very savvy web person, I think I was the victim of a spam email. It looked like it was coming from Google. It was identical to their emails. It was about security. They didn't ask for my username and password, just told me about some security features. I checked the reply to address and it looked right. I clicked on the link in the email and it took me to (what looked exactly like) a Google page. It asked me to login to my email and then said I had updated my security settings.Looked totally legit but I think that is the only possible way they got my login information.I jumped out of bed when I was made aware about the situation (more on that here) and took action immediately. When I couldn't login to my account, I contacted Google and reported it. This caused the hackers to not be able to log back in. It is important to read ALL the steps first and try to follow them in order because you may give the hackers a chance to hack again if you don't. Many of these steps may only be Gmail centric since I am not familiar with other programs.

  1. Contact Gmail or your email provider. Get passwords reset and changed. Make it clear that you do not have access and believe you were hacked. The hackers set up my fail safes (security question, default phone number to text password to, and secondary email account) to their information.
  2. Once you gain access, in Gmail there is a little button on the very bottom right of the page. It says this:
    Last account activity: 10 minutes agoDetails
    1. The "Details" is the button. Press that and a record of where you are logging in comes up. Chances are, they are using something to cloak their location. Don't try to catch them here. Just press: This account does not seem to be open in any other location. However, there may be sessions that have not been signed out. Log out from all other sessions. This will force the hackers out if they are still in your account.
  3. The next step is to go to the mail settings. Press the button for Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Most likely they created a new reply to address. It should look a lot like your real address but be on ymail, hotmail, etc. I think they choose ymail since if you are reading fast, it looks like gmail.
    1. IMMEDIATELY disable the forwarding. They set it to forward all incoming mail and delete them from your inbox. Save changes at the bottom.
  4. Now that you have kicked them out of your email, let's do some damage control. Look in the trash folder for all your email that was dumped. I am pretty sure they have written a program to dump all into the trash.
  5. Find the emails they sent to your contacts. They "bcc'd" everyone but you can still see the names. DO NOT USE YOUR CONTACT BOOK YET. Copy and paste those names into an email and let everyone know you are not in Madrid or London, you have not been held up at gun point, and it's your call if you want to tell them to send you money or not... ;)
  6. Once you have sent those, it's time to recover email. In the trash, press the check box at the top of the navigation, you know, so it selects all. Once all 100 emails in the trash are selected, a little piece becomes highlighted under the navigation. It says, All 100 conversations on this page are selected. Select all xxx conversations in Trash. The second part of this is a link. If you click it, you will select all emails in the trash. I highly suggest just doing that to save your emails. I could not save mine, please save yours!
  7. Click the Move To button and move them all to your inbox. If you have utilized filters/folders, you can easily archive those back. You will have to trash some and save others. This will be, most likely, tedious but better than losing everything like me!
  8. You can do all that later, it will take time. For now, you are good. We have more to do.
  9. Be sure you change ALL of your passwords. Do not make them all the same. Sorry, it's for your own good. Change characters, change numbers, change cases... make them different! In my case, they had logged onto my Facebook so I knew they had more information.
    1. Make it a little complicated to be safe. Like your password could be HacKersSucK'2011 or hackersSUCK_2011 or hackerSuck/2011 or hacker$$uck'1969 ... lots of options to use random characters. Get creative but jot it down in a safe, non-web, place.
  10. Now, here is where they really get nasty. Remember in number 5 when I said not to use your contact book yet? Yeah, well there was a good reason. I didn't notice this until 7 or 8 hours into the clean up of my mess. Those jerks messed up my contact list! They used a program to add the tiny word "in" after every email address... all 500 of them! Had I not used the "copy from the BCC" method, I would have sent a bunch of emails and gotten them all bounced back. This is why my instructions to you are important and purposeful.
    1. Gmail has a nice feature where you can restore you contacts to a previous point. I restored mine to the night before the hacking and voila! All fixed. Easy enough but not top priority when you get hacked.
    2. P.S. What I mean by the word "in" appended to your emails, all my contacts looked like this: SuzyQin@blankmail.com when her real email would have been SuzyQ@blankmail.com. Devilish suckers, huh?

I hope this hard earned education of mine is helpful to people out there. Please, leave me a comment and tell me if this information helped you out of a hacking situation. I just think these people are the lowest of the low. Fine, email our friends, they aren't stupid enough to think we went on a surprise vacation to Madrid but to systematically destroy our electronic storage? Unconscionable. So inhumane and truly shows people with a lack of morals and care for anyone but themselves.If you haven't yet, and would like to read the story of my experience (and not just my tips and lessons) please read my blog here: HackerPocalypse 2011 - The Story

HackerPocalypse 2011 - The Story

Here is the first part of a two-part story. This is the story of HackerPocalypse 2011.I am a savvy online person. I can spot scams a mile away. I debunk chain letters and forwards. This scam was so insidious that I was caught in its web. If I was caught, you could be too. This first part is the story of what happened, the next blog will be about how to prevent it and what to do when it happens to you. As my cousin said, "There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that have been hacked and those that will be."It was 5:30 in the morning on a Thursday. I was coming off a rough week. We had three events that week. The lead up was harsh. 60-70 hour work weeks. Coming home only to sleep, change and go back to work. I was busting tush. We got to unwind after the last event on Wednesday with a few adult beverages and afterwards I headed home. I was beat. So extremely exhausted. I finally went to bed around 10:30. I fell into bed totally wiped out.At 5:30 in the morning I started getting texts. One eye open, I noticed the name and decided I would go back to sleep. Why the heck would he be texting me at 5:30 in the morning? Whatever, check it later. I had tossed and turned all night... my brain never fully shutting off. I just wanted my last 2 hours of sleep... I wasn't to get them.Next was a text from my brother on the east coast. Weird. He rarely texts and never this early. What is going on? With one eye open I see the words "email" and "robbed." I close my eyes. "Was Ronin robbed? Did I get an email? Is my little brother okay?" I am starting to realize I won't be able to go back asleep when the next two texts come in. Both from a local friend. I put together that the first two texts were friends on the east coast but this was close to home. Why was Eric texting me at 5:45 in the morning? Seriously, dude... I'm sleeping.I open both eyes to read this one... "Your personal email has been hacked - change your password ASAP!"I sit bolt upright. WHAT?I try to access my email on my phone. Last email received: 2:17 a.m.It is now 6:07 a.m. and I can't access them. In just about 4 hours, they locked me out of my email.I am half awake, dizzy with the vertigo I try to avoid by not sitting bolt upright from a prone position, made worse by my confusion and exhaustion. I try accessing everything from my, what now looks like an extraordinarily tiny, iPhone screen.Dude. Seriously? I stumble to my living room put my computer on the floor and stretch out. Lights are still off in an attempt to fix the problem and still catch some zzzzzzz's...  5 or 10 minutes later these exact words cross my mind, "Not Likely."This is going to be harder than I expected. I can't access any of my gmail accounts. Eric sends me the text of the message to my work account. This is the first time I see what all 500 of my contacts (friends, family, work acquaintances, strangers who emailed me once, businesses) saw...

HiMy regrets for this sudden request, I have been involved in a robberyduring my trip to Madrid, Spain. I got mugged and all my belongingscash, mobile phone and credit cards were all stolen at gun point.  Ineed your help as am trying to raise some money.I've made contact with my bank but they are not providing a fastsolution. I need you to lend me some money to sort my self out of thispredicament, will pay back once I get this over with.Please let me know if you can assist me in anyway so i can forward youdetails to effect a transfer. You can reach me via email or thehotel's desk phone +3493106____.ThanksTalia--Talia H DavisMarketing Manager*Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado"In the midst of difficulty, lies opportunity." --Albert Einstein"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed." --Sean O'Casey

That is it in its entirety (with some of the phone number removed so no one contacts them). Did you find this blog because you searched this information? Good. Keep reading and read my second blog about what to do when this happens to you. I found out some tricky information.Well, I imagine it was shocking to the 300 people I saw the day before at a huge event that I had, evidently hopped on a plane, gone to Madrid, gotten mugged at gun point, and emailed them. Shocking how fast the world moves.Now that I have given up sleeping, I have settled in for the long haul. I am in my recliner taking the right steps (again a plug for part two, how to fix this once it happens). I find out that they may be jerks but they are smart and fast. They covered their bases. As I am requesting access to my account (because at this point, I had absolutely none and no obvious way to regain access other than Google intervention) I am Googling the scam. I find records that (duh) this has happened many times before. I let those who have been there, guide me. I learn tips and tricks but I also learn something horrifying... in many of these testimonials the hackers deleted all of their email.WHAT?! Dude, hack my email account my don't destroy my electronic life! Now I am nervous. Will that happen to me or not? Will my emails from my brother who has passed away be safe? The business records I keep in my email? The institutional history I have for various organizations... the horrid memories I, for some sadistic reason, saved in my email.... will they all be gone?I raised this concern to one friend. He laughed it off... this was serious to me. By then it was time for most normal people to get up and the phone was ringing and my Facebook was blowing up. Another dear friend, Mel, who is also a writer, got on with me. When I told her I knew and what I feared awaited me when I had access again, she understood. You see we are both collectors of words. That was a 10 year collection and I feared it was gone.I began changing every password to something different and obscure, praying I could remember all of them. They had access to my bank info, Facebook, etc. In fact, Mel said they had been on my Facebook chat at one point. Everything got changed. Down to my password for this blog. I wasn't going to let these people have anything more than they have taken already.I was granted access to my account again around 8 am. I was scared to see what I would find.Inbox: EmptyFamily folder: EmptyMoney folder: EmptySent folder: EmptyIt was the same in every folder. I had a lot of them.... and a lot of emails. One person online had said their emails were in the trash folder. I checked it. Over 11,000 emails in the trash. WHEW! They hadn't made them disappear forever.First step, passwords all changed.Second step, settings checked.... what's this? They had changed my email to forward every single incoming email to an account they set up - taliah.davis@ymail.com (clearly they didn't know me). I cleaned that up right away. Hackers, you are SHUT DOWN!Third step, I emailed everyone to tell them this:

Well friends and family and acquaintances who I happened to email at any point in my life...You might have received an email from me very early this morning telling you I was in Madrid and needed money. I amA. not in MadridB. not been robbed at gun pointandC. while we are all always in need of money... don't need you to do anything.My email was hacked. Every email that I ever had dumped into the trash for me to try to recover. Please ignore that email and NEVER, NEVER put your password into any website or anything. I can't figure out when or where or how this happened to me but it is becoming all too common.Call this an opportunity for us to catch up. Very sorry for any inconvenience.Best,Talia

It turned out to be a great vehicle for catching up with old friends. Once that as out, I started the process of trying to recover my email.I went to the trash and was saving hundreds of current emails at a time. Then I thought, well the older ones are the more precious so do that first. I got some saved from November to March of this year (the time I was finishing up in Israel and then moving back to Colorado) when, while chatting with Mel online and on the phone with my mothers...BLINKThe trash permanently deleted.I hyperventilated This can't be happening.Gone. All gone.My mother is screaming a million miles away... "Talia! Talia! Talk to me! What happened??"I'm crying hysterically. I tell her that my emails deleted themselves. They must have left a program to do something or were still in the account and saw what I was doing.I used the Gmail feature to force anyone logged in out of the account and cried. My moms tried to console me. I needed to hang up. Several friends were chatting with me and asking what was going on through Facebook or GChat or text message. Most people said, "That sucks."Mel got it.We mourned together for those lost words, sent into cyberspace by the evil hackers.I called my father. He was meeting with another rabbi in Denver that day, unbeknownst to me. He calmed me down. He reminded me that I had the memories of the things I lost but also that it was literally, that day, the start of a new month, Elul. Elul is the last month before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It's a time for refreshing and renewing and letting go of the past.These hackers, whom I am tempted to call many nasty names, gave me freedom from the electronic chains that held me to some of my past.Once I did all I could do online, I closed my laptop and crawled back into bed. It was almost 10am. Four and a half hours after this ordeal began with a text message. I took a 20 minute nap and got up feeling refreshed. I dressed and met my father for a rare treat, a lunch together.We talked and he counciled me. Go to your specialists, right? My father is a specialist in sitting in council.My mothers, on the other hand, they called every computer person they ever met or heard of trying to fix this for me.Mel mourned the words with me.Eric told me to get a dirty chai (even though I felt nauseous) and face the day.My brother played it cool and quiet, in his perfect way. Offering support when I needed it but hanging back so as not to overwhelm me.And my dear friend Amanda, who saw me later in the day, hugged me, laughed with me, and reminded me that life goes on.The silver lining of the experience was the number of people who said they would have totally believed it if I ran off and had gone to Israel but Madrid? No way. Another friend said he knew it wasn't true because I would have kicked the mugger's butt first. HA! What great friends!It's been over a week since this happened. I've found that I am missing things that I will never recover but mostly, I am not missing much. I feel lighter. I feel refreshed. I still feel angry but I have moved forward.I know people might be reading this thinking, what a self-indulgent woman. What a waste of a blog or how melodramatic... For me, this was the death of something very important. What I lost in those 4 hours can never be recovered. The words of a brother who died, of friends who have died, memories, scraps of thought to write about forever gone into the dark hole of my brain... gone, never to be seen again.But I hope people can learn from this experience. So HackerPocalypse 2011 - The Lesson (aka part 2) will focus on that. Stay tuned.

Is New Media Mainstream?

This was written for an online publication and never published so I thought I would share it with my wonderful blog readers! Enjoy... I hope!Is New Media Mainstream?By Talia DavisThey say you know technology isn’t ‘cool’ anymore when your parents join. I have to admit, it was interesting to become ‘friends’ with my dad on Facebook but, overall, I feel that theory is incorrect. Facebook and Twitter may not be ‘edgy’ any more or reserved for us early adopters but I think the world at large is better for it. Twitter and Facebook have become mediums to share information and perhaps a message. Whereas they began as places to just connect to your friends, they are now places to find like-minded people and learn.Take the Tech Rav for example. Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is pioneering new, Kosher ways to use technology. He sends out regular messages that are designed to help the Jewish tweeter Jew. Every Friday, before shabbis, he sends out a message like this one –That is a nice break from the spam and less helpful conversations on Twitter. But it doesn’t end there. Forgot about Counting the Omer? Don’t worry, Tech Rav thought of that too…But I have to say his personalized Shabbis times is what impresses me the most. Just tweet @ShabbosStarts with your zip code and you get a response of the correct time that Shabbis starts in your area.Rabbi Pittinsky knows his audience and has provided some great tools for the Jewish Tweeter.One of the most ambitious social Jewish projects took place last year in the days leading up to Passover with the Tweet the Exodus event. As they put it “Relive the Exodus from Egypt, one tweet at a time.” Over the course of thirteen days, Twitter was the medium of a fascinating exchange.  The Pharaoh, Moshe, The G-d of Israel, even the Red Sea had its own twitter account. Other than breaks on Shabbat, it was an ongoing event filled with humor and education.The internet has made our world smaller and smaller. But it gives us the opportunity to connect with other Jews on levels that were never possible before. Jewish Tweet of the day? We have that - @JewishTweets. Want to send a message to the Kotel? No problem! @TheKotel. Need some advice? Rabbis of every flavor abound! @ReBahir, @RabbiRami, @RabbiShmuley, @RabbiJason, @ImaBima, @RecoveryRabbi. Take your pick of organizations and information... @JFederations, @JNFUSA, @TheJewishMuseum, @JTAnews, @Lubavitch.So yes, my dad is on Facebook (but my mom swears she will never be) and Twitter (though he still needs a little coaching) but I am thrilled at how mainstream these tools are. I can get a basketball score, local news, and an Omer reminder all in one place. That’s the beauty of the internet and I am so glad that we, as Jews, are fully embracing it.

Two Cool Jews Being Cool Jews in Soho

I have two amazing friends. Okay, I set myself up for that one. I have many cool friends but today I want to talk about two in particular.I met Esty and Dovi Scheiner what feels like a million years ago. Dovi's brother is a rabbi in Colorado who my family is close with and I met them at a bar mitzvah. It is Dovi's sister-in-law Chani as well as Esty and Dovi themselves that I have to thank for my amazing spiritual journey into Orthodox Judaism and Chabad in particular. I am not going to go into my whole background and experience and journey into observance (that can be for another time). What I do want to talk about is the amazing and all-encompassing positive spiritual energy this couple exudes. Here's a little background on these two...Esty and Dovi are both from large and well-known Chabad families. They grew up in Boro Park and Crown Heights, Brooklyn (sorry for the vague sketch, I did not interview them for this blog and am telling their story from memory). They got engaged and set their wedding date. The morning of their wedding they were absorbed in prayer and fasting (as is tradition the day of a Jewish wedding). Until they noticed the chaos around them. Their wedding date was September 11, 2001. As NYC was brought to its knees by terrorists, Esty and Dovi consulted their rabbi... asking if they should get married that day. His advice? Bring joy into the darkness of the day. And so they were married. They have since dedicated their marriage to revitalizing Judaism and bringing  a new kind of tradition to the financial district and SoHo. And their success is truly amazing!They founded the World Tikkun Center and Esty baked challahs every Friday and hand delivered them to the mayor's office. In my time with them, in the early days, I met some of the most amazing and inspired Jews, including a young Matisyahu... just starting out, selling burned CDs. Very cool. Not only that but they took me into their home and introduced me to their families. I have been to weddings of sisters and feel close to these women (as I never had any biological sisters myself) as if I were family.I am proud of my friends and though life has intervened and I haven't seen them in far too long I am excited to speak about their success!SoHo Synagogue is the hottest, coolest, trendiest place to daven (pray) in the city. It was when it was in their home... it is even more so, now that they moved into an old Gucci storefront on Crosby street.

  • The New York Times says "A hipster synagogue grows in SoHo."
  • As for decor choices for the new locale, The Gothamist said, "Of course the young rabbi behind the new synagogue in SoHo for 'unaffiliated, downtown secular Jews' would turn to an 'aggressively whimsical furniture' designer when planning the newest house of worship to hit the chic neighborhood."
  • Of course the Wall Street Journal couldn't be left out in this conversation about design, "Mr. Scheiner says he believes young Jews are put off by design that smacks of their parents' Judaism—be it wooden pews or stained-glass sanctuaries."
  • Even the Jerusalem Post got into the action, digging into a new format for shuls... "(the synagogue) styles itself deliberately as representing 'a fresh vision for translating the inspiration of Judaism for a new generation,' said Scheiner.... 'It’s completely counter-intuitive,' Scheiner said. 'It’s an unbelievable message about the continuity of Jewish life. This is a generation of Jews that has been alienated from institutional Judaism. They find the grandiose synagogues of old irrelevant and uninspiring.' 'Show me something that’s personally relevant, in a Jewish sense, and I’ll stay,' said Ben Jablonski, a young donor to the synagogue."
  • DNAInfo, the online Manhattan news source said, "'We listened,' Scheiner said. 'We learned about peoples' lifestyles, priorities, interests.' And SoHo Synagogue and its revolutionary new space is the result. 'This is a sanctuary,' Scheiner said. 'Hopefully it will be a sanctuary for young Jewish people at the end of a rat-race week.'"
  • The NYPost thinks, you might be Too Cool For Shul in their article. They mention, “'It’s Judaism, rebranded,' says congregant Joe Wright. 'It maintains the tradition but offers something new.'” (And they have some great pics!)
  • And last... but really not least... my favorite magazine and the best way to stay on top of what is happening in NYC, New York Magazine takes you on a visual tour. Check out their pictures here: Space of the Week: Not Your Father’s Shul

You have to check these guys out if you are ever in The City. They are amazing people trying to do incredible things for Jews. And they bring up a good point... what is the future of Judaism? Certainly my generation feels very differently about synagogue membership than my parent's generation. How do we keep our religion relevant?It is a serious question. Got answers?