The Next Age in Judaism

First there was the temple, then the synagogue, and next the minyan model? Many speculate as to what the next age in Judaism will look like. There was an enormous transition from temple times to the synagogue and there's a feeling that change is in the air. Seeing that control went from the Priest to the Rabbi, from leader to teacher, one might presume that the trend is toward decentralizing power, which the chavruta or minyan model linked to above describes.

The leadership at our Shul recently highlighted the emerging trend in NYC or grassroots, decentralized, non-funded Jewish groups that are increasing rapidly in participants (many of the groups are attractive because they don't ask for membership). On the one hand it might be a threat to the synagogue and on the other hand, I'm sure the priests saw the synagogue in the same way during temple times, but what a blessing the synagogue was to actually preserve Judaism when the temple was destroyed. All the same, it seems harsh to call the synagogue a "consumer model" as the linked article does -- I think it's more that some people have adopted a consumer model to fund synagogues, but they aren't intrinsically such. Maybe that's the lesson here. This may be the next age or this may simply be a fringe movement (like the Reconstructionist movement) that has relatively small membership, but becomes a big influence on the direction of Judaism.

Digital Photo Tricks

I learned about a photo technique today that makes a normal photo look like it was actually a model, which reminded me of another cool digital technique that I thought I'd share.