multi-city tele-Shabbat!

This past Friday, May 15th 2009, witnessed the first ever multi-Moishe House tele-Shabbat! But lemme rewind for a sec...

As the proud Moishe hosts and hostesses that we are, we all host Shabbats, oftentimes on the same nights and – if we're in the same time zone – at the same time. Meanwhile, we go about our Moishe activities independently, oftentimes with little more than Jeremy's mentions of each other to cultivate a sense of connection between us. So the intention here was to use videochat as a medium for multiple houses to celebrate Shabbat together. And thus, Providence, Hoboken, DC, and Philly got together and planned a simultaneous Shabbat, using iChat to transform videochatting screens into portals connecting our houses; hence a multi-Moishe House tele-Shabbat.

Ah, but technology has a temperament of its own: at T minus almost zero, our network went down (NOTE: FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER) and was unable to even connect to the internet, so we had to hop onto another weaker one. Jeremy was having difficulties tuning in. There wasn't sufficient bandwidth for the four houses to iChat together. People in cities across the country were getting hungry and impatient (ok fine, only four cities, and our guests were not only forgiving but amused). So at T minus slightly past zero, I made the executive decision to split up into pairs – DC with Philly, and Hoboken with us (Providence). Hoboken and us did a communal Kiddush, led by Nathaniel in Providence (captured in the video above and also posted on YouTube), and Hamotzi over the bread, led by David in Hoboken. Then it looked like Philly had gone offline, so we hooked back up with DC for a 3-way videochat to enjoy our meals together. We'd been nervous about the screens feeling supremely un-Shabbatish (un-Shabbish?) and people in remote houses not interacting with each other, but at least this aspect of the evening worked out absolutely impeccably. Our laptop was sitting at the end of our table, so we had our own conversation going while being able to see Hoboken and DC at the other end of the table, and people would periodically leave our conversation to interact folks in other houses. But because it was difficult to hear each other, interaction evolved into something more playful, visual, theatrical – the fellows at our table modeled our colorful wigs, Hoboken showed off their pet ferret (confirmed Jew), all three houses spontaneously broke into Redemption Song by Bob Marley. It was adorable and hilarious and precisely what we were hoping for. And although there were tech glitches at the actual event (profuse apologies, Philly), the planning process itself was precisely what we were hoping for – as I discussed in my previous post, it became its own way to connect more intimately with other Moishe Houses.

So voila: I'd definitely be down for an encore, and encourage other houses in the same time zone to consider the possibility...