The view from the pews
The view from the pews
Producing the High Holy Days, Deanna Levy, Director of Communications & Marketing
If you had said to me a year ago that I would be directing and producing the 5781 High Holy Days, I wouldn’t have believed you. But then, coronavirus happened, and while it broke our hearts to do so, the best thing for the health of our congregation was to hold these Holy Days online.
Weeks of preparation, organizing, and rehearsing enabled us to bring the High Holy Days to each of you. We hired a production team to create the best experience of worship possible, connecting our sacred community in ways we never dreamed possible. We saw many of you posting and sharing on social media worshiping safely in your home sanctuaries for the online services. If you took some photos, we would love to see them! Please email your High Holy Day photos to us at life@holyblossom.org.
From the countless messages of gratitude we have received, it is clear that we brought the splendour, majestry, and Kavanah of the High Holy Days in an impactful way. We had 1,344 users* joining our Rosh Hashanah Services. For Yom Kippur, we had 2,625 users.
* a user is counted as the computer for a particular session, we can only track the number of users, not how many people were with you watching a service. To be conservative, one user would equal about 2.5 people watching the service, so by those numbers, we had 3,360 people watching our Rosh Hashanah Services and 6,562 for Yom Kippur!
Holy Blossom Temple has held High Holy Day Services in person for the past 165 years, but this one was different, and hearing our beautiful Shehecheyanu was even more special. I am humbled for how we all we all came together and shared in this momentous experience. We are truly blessed at Holy Blossom, a special thank you to my professional colleagues, our inspiring clergy, lay partners, board of directions, the production team, our liturgy Gabbaim, and the many volunteers who made Holy Blossom Temple History with our online High Holy Days. We have come a long way since our very first livestream (if you missed it, you can watch it here).
We will be sending our members a High Holy Days 5781 survey; we encourage you to fill it out! Your insights are most valuable to us moving forward.
Thank you to the Holy Blossom team for choreographing a meaningful Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur. Your hard work enabled our community to gather in spirit and in purposeful prayer.
Have a good year filled with chesed and mazel!
I can only say that it was an exceptional production, inspiring and a very moving experience in spite of being in our own home. It brought me to tears to chant with my spouse ‘Shehehiyanu’for many obvious reasons it made me feel sentimental and indeed grateful. Thank you for your efforts the staff and clergy for making our High Holidays this year truly memorable!
Amazing work Deanna! Thank you for behind the scenes work to bring our congregation such meaningful High Holidays. And for sharing your experiences in this post.