Oh, the places we've been!

One year ago, when we took our services out of the building and onto Zoom, I decided that a housebound congregation needed ways to expand its horizons, to take flights of fancy when physical travel was impossible.   So each Shabbat - and at other times too - I've used the Zoom virtual background feature to take us to sacred places around the world. At a time when everyone was cooped up in quarantine, when even the New York Times' travel section was renamed "At Home," we needed that vehicle of escape. I know I did. Visiting these holy places took some of the humdrum out of our day and added a sense of wonder. It also added a bit of intrigue to the service, causing people to ask, "Where in the world will the rabbi be today?" Or maybe you didn't. But for me, these fanciful flights helped me forge a new intentionality (kavvanah) as I prepared for each service. Without leaving my home, I was able to visit more places than Waldo or Carmen Sandiego. And since almost all of these photos were taken by me, each Shabbat I was whisked back to a key moment of my own spiritual growth. How better to celebrate Shavuot than to be on Mount Sinai, next to myself as a teenager. Or on Hanukkah, to be standing before the ancient temple model in Jerusalem. Or on Inauguration weekend, to be socially distant from Bernie Sanders, to celebrate our high school graduates with a trip to Hogwarts (and Rydell High too). We communed with a cow in Varanasi, India's holiest city, on Shabbat Parah (the Shabbat of the Cow), we mourned George Floyd's murder at the Lincoln Memorial, and commemorated D-Day at the American Cemetery in Normandy and Pride Shabbat at the Stonewall Inn. We lifted our eyes to a sunrise in Nepal, and marveled at Victoria Falls; we celebrated Israel's birthday in Latrun and Yom Hashoah at Auschwitz and Terezin. Through these images, prayer was better able to lift us out of our cabin fever and send our souls soaring. I can't wait to see more people in person - but I must confess, I'm really going to miss the ways Covid forced us to to be more creative in our worship, and we need to incorporate this into our plans as we return to our "new normal."

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I’ve collected over 30 "on-location" screen shots of these virtual backgrounds in this blog posting. Feel free to peruse them all. And then choose your top three. Which ones sent you on flights of fancy of your own back at the service when that photo was featured. Which lifted you out of a rut at just the right time, or brought back memories of brighter days. Or tell us what that location means to you now. If you are really feeling nostalgic for the Covid year, I’ve archived many of our Zoom services and events from the past year, which you can access here.