Kol Nidre webcast set to draw 40,000

A California-based live webcast of Kol Nidre services is expected to garner more than 40,000 viewers.

The service led by Rabbi Naomi Levy of Nashuva, including preaching, traditional prayer, meditation and music by a five-piece, multicultural band, will be livestreamed at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday (Pacific time) on the website of the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal.

Last year, 40,000 viewers tuned in to the online Kol Nidre service, according to the organization. The viewers included guests at a resort in the Costa Rican rainforest, a hospital patient in Brooklyn, residents of a vacation home in southern France and a resident of Moravia, Iowa, who called himself “the only Jew in at least 100 miles.”

“I’m humbled by the thousands of people who write to me from all around the world,” Levy told JTA. “People in hospital beds, people looking for a way back to Judaism, college students searching for a meaningful service that resonates.”

Nashuva, founded by Levy, who was ordained in the first class of women at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, calls itself a “post-denominational, non-membership community that meshes spirituality with social action.”