Shul broadcasts Shabbat services live on web

WINNIPEG — It appears that Winnipeg’s Shaarey Zedek Synagogue may be the first shul in the world to enable Internet users to access a live audio broadcast of its Shabbat morning services.

Through the synagogue’s website at shaareyzedek.mb.ca, anyone with web access can hear a live broadcast of the services from 9 a.m. to noon every Shabbat.

The synagogue – the largest in western Canada – defines itself on its website as a “centre for Conservative Judaism.”

In a phone interview with The CJN, Shaarey Zedek’s chazzan, Anibal Mass, said that “the idea for doing this comes from the responsa of the Conservative movement’s rabbis in a paper entitled ‘Wired to the Kadosh Baruch Hu: Minyan Via The Internet.’

“In that paper, written by Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, it was decided that it was kosher to have a person pray at home through the Internet, as long as there was an existing minyan at the synagogue service itself. Rabbi Reisner’s paper was approved on March 13, 2001, by a vote [of the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards] of 18 rabbis in favour, two opposed, and one abstaining.”

The complete paper can be found on the synagogue’s website.

Mass added: “We, at the synagogue set up our Internet broadcast before Shabbat services start on Friday. We have recording software and broadcasting software that is set up before Shabbat, and we are asking people to leave their Internet on before Shabbat, so they don’t have to turn on their computer on Shabbat, and then they can tune into our services. A person can use this method to fulfil the obligation to prayer.”

In his paper, Rabbi Reisner writes that “some individual Jews, far from an organized community, would wish, or need at times, to participate in communal prayers… At issue, then, is not whether one may constitute a quorum over the Internet – one may not – but whether one may respond and fulfil one’s obligations from outside the quorum site if one has heard the prayer of the minyan. Here, the precedents suggest that one may, indeed, do so.”

Mass, who immigrated to Winnipeg from Argentina, said that Shaarey Zedek realized it had the technology to webcast its services relatively easily.

“We already were digitally recording our services when we had a bar or bat mitzvah. We looked into it and found out that the only synagogue doing something like this was Temple Emanuel in Manhattan, which is broadcasting their Kabbalat Shabbat services through a local radio station, 93.6 FM. They post their Saturday morning services, but only after Shabbat is over,” he said

According to Mass, both Shaarey Zedek’s senior rabbi, Alan Green, and Lawrence Pinsker, its associate rabbi, were in favour of the webcasts.

“The ritual committee was responsive to the idea, and the board of directors approved it,” Mass said

“It is a great thing for people who are sick, disabled or unable to come to synagogue. Now they can participate in hearing the service from their computer and fulfil their obligation to prayer,” he added.

“But, it’s not just sick people who can benefit from this. We have a lot of members who are immigrants to Winnipeg from Argentina and now even if their families can’t all make it to a bar mitzvah, they can hear the service online and feel as if they are there.

“We also have a lot of immigrants from Israel, and their families in Israel can join the simchahs via the Internet if they aren’t able to fly in from Israel These are benefits we hadn’t entirely thought about when we set up the Internet broadcasts,” he said.

Mass, who has been at Shaarey Zedek since 2002, said also that “in a community like Winnipeg, where winters are extremely cold and it can be difficult to make it to synagogue, especially for the elderly, this is a good solution.”

He said the congregation is just learning about the webcasts, and “last service I know of, about nine people tuned in to the services by Internet. We’ve been getting very positive feedback.”

Mass said the shul may consider adding video in the future, but it involves “totally different software,” and is too expensive to do right now.