Lid wid RE SE SW

7.‘orship in the Cloud 65

Interestingly, a 1989 Reform responsum about playing recorded services in a hospital. also seems to imply that“prayer via technology” isnot the real thing. Although it allowed the activity, the committee never claimed that listening to the service on a recording was communal worship. Instead, they called it“a stimulus to individual prayer.” The implication was that the prayer itself may not have been fully valid, but that it still had value. Both parts of the equation seem relevant here: prayer heard via the Internet may not rise to the“status of true prayer,” but it may not be useless, either.

Much of the discussion surrounding the live streaming of services revolves around the issue of community and communal prayer. Does web-participation in a service count” as communal prayer? Is that a real community? Implied in that question is that communal prayer is important, or possibly even mandatory, in some way. It's worth mentioning that the Responsa Committee has directly affirmed this.” Although it counseled leniency, in general, and left open the possibility of flexibility with the definition of minyan(e.g. how many people are actually needed), it strongly held that communal prayer, defined as prayer with a minyan, was an integral part of our Jewish lives. So, can that need to be filled over an Internet connection? Can we say that one is fully part of a minyan which exists on the other side of a webcam? The traditional sources would seem to say no. The conversation begins with Berakhot 6a which tells us that the divine presence accompanies a group of ten people who sit together in prayer. As the text, which forms the basis of all the laws of minyan, uses the word“sitting” can be understood to imply physical proximity. Although it is obvious that the rabbis of old could not imagine praying over the distances that are