#blogexodus : future (tweet #torah at sinai)

aiming toward the future

How do I long for Your pres­ence? Let me count the days:

הִנְנִי מוּכָן וּמְזוֻמָּן לְקַיֵּם מִצְוַת עֲשֵׂה שֶׁל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר.

Hin’ni muchan um’zuman l’kayem mitz­vat aseh shal s’firat ha’Omer.

I am ready to move from free­dom to respon­si­bil­i­ty, as I count the Omer days.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵנוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל סְפִירַת הָעֹמֶר.

Baruch atah Adon­ai, Elo­heinu Melech ha-olam, ash­er kid­dis­hanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu al S’fi­rat Ha-omer.

Blessed are You Adon­ai our God, Sov­er­eign of all space and time, who has made us dis­tinct through Your direc­tives and has direct­ed us to count the Omer.

הַיּוֹם יוֹם שֶׁהֵם שָׁבוּעוֹת וְ יָמִים לָעֹמֶר.

Hay­om yom she­heim shavuot v’ yamim la’Omer.

Today is the day which is weeks and days of the Omer.

פסח points to שבעות

Con­sid­er Pesach and the Seder as point­ers to Shavuot, the time when we receive the 10 Com­mand­ments at the foot of Mount Sinai. We begin count­ing the Omer at Pesach.

Many Omer cal­en­dars exist. Imag­ine a dif­fer­ent one here. It fol­lows the col­or wheel. Begin count­ing in the upper right cor­ner on the first day of Sefi­rah with the “bright red of rebel­lion” and end forty-nine days lat­er at the “bril­liant vio­let of roy­al­ty” ready to receive Torah. Each day of Sefi­rah focus on that col­or (and its qual­i­ties) as it appears in our world.

“royg­biv” omer calendar

and if it is a pointer…

tweet #torah to the top

Once again I pre­pare to count the Omer online. Once again, I expect that some of my friends will also be count­ing the Omer on Twit­ter and Face­book. I enjoy see­ing this count­ing and all the dif­fer­ent ways we do it. Last year I felt momen­tum build as we neared the moment of Revelation.

what

In 2009 Recon­struc­tion­ist Rab­bi Shai Gluskin orga­nized an attempt to bring Torah to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble on the evening of Shavuot, using Twit­ter. As he expressed it then (on Twitter):

Are you in? A 49^th day of omer prep for Shavuot #Torah fest. Goal: get many tweet­ing Torah and see #Torah trend in top 10 dur­ing the day.

Some peo­ple won­der why we might do this. Did not Hil­lel say that among our pri­ma­ry tasks is (Avot 1:12) lov­ing mankind (all of human­i­ty), and bring­ing them (all) close to Torah. אוהב את הברייות ומקרבן לתורה?

That year (5769) we were able to Tweet #Torah to the mid-30s among trend­ing top­ics. I do not know how “high” we reached in 5770 or 5771. I pro­pose we give it our best again this year.

when

The “day” of May 25 2012 is “erev” Erev Shavuot. I sug­gest that we pre­pare as many 133 char­ac­ter Torah lessons as we can to “release” on that day. If you have been shar­ing #Torah Tweets through the year… Torah does not go bad or stale. You should feel free to “recy­cle” those thoughts. I would like to begin tweet­ing at sun­down Jerusalem time on the 25^th. Does any­one know how to cal­cu­late that?

why

I think this is a great way to encour­age aware­ness of Torah. I’m sure we each have many sim­ple “Torah thoughts” that can be expressed in 133 char­ac­ters. (Don’t for­get to leave room for the final space and #Torah, that’s 7 more char­ac­ters.) If you think that 133 char­ac­ters is not enough for a pro­found thought from Torah, con­sid­er that the fol­low­ing sen­tence is only 102 char­ac­ters (also from “Hil­lel the Tweeter”):

If I am not for myself, who will be for me. if I am for myself alone, what am I. And if not now, when?

how

Or con­sid­er these:

• #Torah is not in heav­en, that you should say: Who shall go up for us to heav­en, & bring it to us, & make us to hear it, that we may do it?
• Nei­ther is #Torah beyond the sea, that you might say: Who shall go over the sea, & bring it to us, & make us hear it, that we may do it?
• But #Torah is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it.

I’m sure that some of us still have Joseph L. Baron’s A Trea­sury of Jew­ish Quo­ta­tions which can serve as a lit­tle gold­mine of tweet­able thoughts.

who

I sug­gest we each pre­pare a num­ber of “tweets” in advance. Set up a text file and then sim­ply copy, and paste them into our pre­ferred Twit­ter tool about once or so an hour (depend­ing on your “capa­bil­i­ties” (sched­ule, etc.)). For those who use Twit­ter with your con­gre­ga­tions, your con­gre­gants, too, can join in… either with their own thoughts, or ques­tions about #Torah, or re-tweet­ing yours. Let’s get every­one involved in think­ing Torah as a lead-in to Shavuot.

If you expect to be busy on May 25, you can use any of a vari­ety of *free* tools that have been devel­oped that enable you to pre­pare your tweets in advance:

• Hoot­Suite
• Twuf­fer
• FutureTweets

You can learn about more sim­i­lar tools here (they may, or may not, still be functioning):

If any of you are active on oth­er list­servs you think might be inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing, please spread the word.

Some addi­tion­al thoughts about this project. In 2011 JPS offered a tool to “shred” the book of Ruth. We may be able to do some­thing sim­i­lar this year. This enabled peo­ple to eas­i­ly share tiny bits of the actu­al text of TaNaKh with lit­tle effort.

But, Twit­ter has lim­i­ta­tions on how fre­quent­ly any one indi­vid­ual (account) can tweet. There­fore, and for gen­er­al “encour­ag­ing broad par­tic­i­pa­tion” rea­sons, it would be good to have as many peo­ple tweet­ing as possible.

• I don’t know at what age peo­ple get their accounts, but, Bar and Bat Mitz­vah stu­dents could be encour­aged to tweet a thought or two about their Torah Portion.
• Con­fir­ma­tion stu­dents could be encour­aged to tweet a thought or two about the Ten Com­mand­ments (as well as, the Torah por­tion from their Bar or Bat Mitz­vah). They might also con­sid­er what it means to be “com­mand­ed” or to “receive Torah”.
• Any adult edu­ca­tion class could tweet their favorite Psalm, Prophet­ic thought, Rab­binic maxim.
• Any­one can tweet a thought about: what it means to be com­mand­ed; what “rev­e­la­tion” means in a world of infor­ma­tion overload.
• In 2010 David Levy of Suc­ca­sun­na pre­pared a tweet for each of the Parsh­iot. I know that some of us write haiku, oth­ers write lim­er­icks. These short forms often fit quite well as tweets.
• If you have ser­mons that are online, short­en the URL using a ser­vice such as <is.gd> and add that short URL to a phrase that describes the ser­mon’s theme.

you get the idea….

After Shavuot 5771, one of the par­tic­i­pants wrote (on that year’s Face­book event page):

What an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence for me! Although we nev­er quite reached the “top”- I was moved by the learn­ing, the com­mu­ni­ty and the incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from my friends and col­leagues! Thank you for cre­at­ing this chance to stand at the foot of a vir­tu­al Sinai and count me in for next year’s program!

Oth­ers want­ed to know how “high” we climbed…

The big ques­tion some asked:

How far did we get to the top of the trend­ing list?

is a bit hard­er to answer, than:

• Did you learn something?
• Did you meet some­one new?
• Did some­one else’s #Torah tweet cause you to think in a way you had not thought before?
• Did your under­stand­ing of #Torah grow?
• Did you feel a bit more a part of the rev­e­la­tion we cel­e­brate at Shavuot?

Please help us broad­en the par­tic­i­pa­tion as much as pos­si­ble. I think you and your con­gre­gants will gain from the expe­ri­ence. If you feel so moved, let us know on the Face­book event page for this year that you plan on attend­ing. Check the side­bar on the right “Prepar­ing for שבעות” for more thoughts on this project.

how will you move from celebrating our freedom to accepting our responsibilities?

what is “#blogexodus”?

This is the last post in the series “#blo­gex­o­dus”. My friend and col­league Phyl­lis Som­mers has thought of yet a new cre­ative way to pre­pare for Pesach. You can learn more here.

blog­ging the exodus