It’s that time of year again. Time to ask for inscription in the (Face)book of life and be absolved of all our digital sins. Technology is making atonement far more complicated than it used to be: Our sins go beyond what we say out loud to every shortsighted tweet, every time we use caps lock in a text message by mistake, every time we have a ‘Damn You Auto-Correct’ moment. So how can we make up for our online sins and use tech to do some good during the High Holidays?

Last Rosh Hashanah, I caught more than one elementary school-aged kid looking bored as can be at services, sneaking a game in on her iPad, hoping she wouldn’t get in trouble. While I’m not sure this is any different than the comic books and novels we used to try to sneak in to temple when we were kids (not that we ever got away with it!) perhaps there’s an opportunity to use apps and devices that teach about Jewish tradition in a fun and engaging way – rather than ones than remove kids from it. I am not condoning whipping out a phone during High Holiday services this year, but there are some new and fun ways to learn about what’s going on up on the bima before they get to temple.

As a religion, Judaism constantly encourages the ongoing interpretation of stories and traditions in ways that reflect the culture of our times. The Passover story of the four children forces us to pause and think about out how all types of children both in ancient times and today might approach and understand the story of the Exodus. Rosh Hashanah traditionally falls near the beginning of the school year as well as marking the new religious year and teaches about the sweetness of learning. I’ve been working with G-dcast, a studio that makes apps and interactive web stories that teach about holidays and traditions in a fun, unique way. We all know the shofar is by far the coolest part of the High Holidays and the new app Wake Up World! allows kids to blow into the microphone of their tablet or smartphone (Android or iPhone) and make the sound of the different shofar calls. I did the voiceover for the app and the final product is something I was really proud to show to my 3-year-old son – and even more proud when I saw him laugh hysterically while blowing into the phone and hearing it make shofar noises. It brought our whole family closer together.  Wake Up World! not only teaches kids the Hebrew words and meanings of the shofar blasts, but also includes a story that makes the holiday relatable and fresh. Just as the experience of sitting in synagogue for the holidays can be both a very individual activity and one that makes you feel part of a much bigger community, our devices can bring us together, too.

We talk a lot in the tech world about disruption – like Uber disrupting the town car industry or Nest disrupting how we heat our homes. Disrupt in this sense means to take a new approach that questions how we have always done things. But when it comes to our kids, technology often seems more like an interruption than a disruption. The focus, often rightly, becomes how can we limit phone time/YouTube time/game time — rather than asking if games and technology can enhance our real life experiences? I don’t think these concepts need to be mutually exclusive.

The Jewish app world has exploded in recent years. There are apps to tell you when sundown is to light the Shabbat candles and apps to send a prayer to the Western Wall, apps on how to bake challah and one of my favorites – Whack-a-Hamen for Purim. Of course, you can take a good idea a bit too far – I’m glad there’s not an iMohel DIY circumcision app, although there are probably some engineers in a garage building it as I write this… Perhaps not EVERYTHING needs to be disrupted…

We have an opportunity to go beyond the obvious and learn something from the rest of the tech world to make something that is relevant, fun, and can compete with the Fruit Ninjas and Angry Birds of the world, while teaching something more than hand-thumb coordination. G-dcast’s apps are making inroads in this space, but like everything we most admire about tech, the sky really is the limit to creativity. Taking the time and energy we currently spend making apps and devices that improve the adult world and shifting some of that to technology that would enrich our kids and their spiritual lives? That would be a real disruption.

By Randi Zuckerberg. 

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