Thursday Morning Information

The zoom meeting will open at 9:00am to allow people time to arrive and be admitted from the waiting room. Please log in between 9:00 and 9:30 and make sure your screen name is recognizable so that we know you are not a zoom-bomber. 

Between 9:00 and 9:30, once you're logged in, we'll have a chance to shmooze together, or if you need to, you can log in and walk away from your screen until the service begins. 

We'll have a few friends helping us let people in, so if you do log in after 9:30 and they don't recognize your name, they may message you to confirm that you're here for the bar mitzvah. Just let them know your name and how you're connected, please. 

If you are having trouble logging in, please text Alan Avery-Peck at 508-794-5443.

Zoom offers us the incredible opportunity to experience each other's presence from afar, but for now it does not allow for the same kind of natural communication, or the satisfying feeling of singing together that we have in person. 

We can't wait to see you all and wish we could also hear you all most of the time, but we're going to try to strike a balance between hearing each other and being able to hear Zalmen. 

Please plan to have your camera on but your microphone muted most of the time so that everyone can hear Zalmen clearly. 

Please do sing and pray with us even if we can't hear you. Somehow seeing each other's participation brings us into community even when we can't hear. 

We will ask that some people (ideally at least 10) unmute when there are congregational responses, particularly for the "devarim shebikedusha", the moments that require the presence of a minyan. 

There will be a few moments when you will be welcome to unmute and call out your "mazel-tov!"s and "yeshar koach!"s 

The chat function will be open as well for you to share your thoughts and blessings. We may or may not be able to process and respond to chats during the service, but we'll definitely see them all afterwards. (FYI: We'll be able to see any private chats too, so keep them friendly.)

The chat will be turned off during Zalmen's Dvar Torah to allow him (and us) to concentrate on his words. We'll turn it back on afterwards. 

After Zalmen's aliyah to the Torah, we will sing Siman Tov Umazal Tov, and ask you to shower him with sweets by gently tossing them at your webcam. One advantage of a "zoomin' Bar Mitzvah" is that you can throw your sweets as many times as you'd like. We'll scroll through the zoom boxes and try to see everyone in this moment.

Zalmen will be leading a weekday shacharit morning service, with a few variations because of the fast day. 

The siddur he will be leading from is the weekday Sim Shalom. Feel free to use whichever siddur you like best, but if you'd like to follow along with the page numbers we'll be announcing and don't have a hard copy of the red sim shalom, you can access it digitally here. 

The Torah reading can be found in the back of the siddur. It's also right here on this handy Sefaria source sheet I made. There are three moments in the reading when Zalmen will pause to allow the congregation to read the next phrase aloud before he reads it. These moments are in bold on the source sheet.