The ubiquitous, white iPod earphones emerging from men’s and women’s jacket pockets as they sit on buses and trains or gallivant through parks, streets and perilously crowded intersections begs a question: Do you really need to be listening to music all the time?
Turns out the answer is no. Now you can listen to Jewish discussions as well.
Michelle Holtz, a congregant at Lafayette’s Temple Isaiah, has given the Reform synagogue an address on the Web, initiating a weekly “podcast.”
For those of you who still listen to LPs, do your taxes with an abacus and wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent, an iPod is a tiny digital device capable of holding hundreds of hours of music or sound files. While cruising through podcastalley.com, Holtz noticed that “an awful lot” of churches had begun posting “Godcasts” of religiously themed shows, but no Jewish congregations had joined in.
The result: “Your Jewish Neighborhood,” a weekly roundup of Holtz’s discussions with Rabbis Roberto Graetz and Judy Shanks and Cantor Leigh Korn on subjects ranging from Broadway musicals to Jewish book clubs to Reform weddings in Israel.
“To my knowledge, when we first started, we were the only podcast from any synagogue in the world. I have comments from people from Australia, Israel and even one from Angola,” said Holtz.
You don’t need an iPod to listen to the weekly discussions, just a computer (with speakers, preferably). The podcasts can be found under “Your Jewish Neighborhood” at podcastalley.com, where there are now 26 other Jewish-themed podcasts, including “iJew,” “There are Jews in Alabama?” and “Rabbi Garfinkel’s Podcast.”
The idea of staking out a claim in the podcast world was an appealing one for both Graetz and Shanks, each of whom is more than knowledgeable about digital music technology.
Graetz has been known to slip on his white headphones on long plane trips down to his native Argentina, and Shanks just ordered her first MP3 player in order to listen to the 21st-century version of books on tape.
Holtz doesn’t plan on recording sermons or guest speakers at Isaiah for her podcasts; she figures that if the format isn’t broke, don’t fix it. She’ll keep talking with the synagogue’s clergy and, if the pattern continues, hundreds and hundreds of people will download and listen.
And that’s music to Shanks’ ears.
“We always want to find new avenues to reach people outside of traditional ways,” she said.
“People come to synagogue because their parents did or they feel drawn for all sorts of different reasons, but a lot of people don’t have those draws. What they do have is a connection to a lot of new technologies. People use iPods and MP3s all the time. The thought is, let’s reach people where they are.”