Repentance? There’s an app for that

Even the Jewish High Holy Days with their soul-searching don’t escape the grasp of high tech. While millions of Jews will be turning their heads and hearts upwards towards heaven, some will also be stealing downward glances, checking out their smartphones for some repentance-inspiring apps. And not surprisingly, they’re out there to be found. A group called G-dcast help users learn more about their Jewish heritage. The eScapegoat app lets them admit their failures to live up to that heritage.

No worries, though — the newly educated sinners will be able to virtually repent by throwing their sins away, via the iPhone Tashlich app.

The G-dcast folks, G-d bless them, have made it their goal “to give every Jewish child and adult the chance to learn the basics with zero barriers to entry. No matter where you live or what you know, we have meaningful, intelligent and fun Jewish learning for you.”

Emphasis on the “fun,” based on the apps on the G-dcast site, includes selections such as “Wake Up World,” (iOS/Android; free) a Rosh Hashanah tale for little kids narrated by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of of Facebook CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg. Arkscape (iOS only; free) is a card matching game that “shares some teachings about the story of Noah in creative ways” (you have to help Noah match up the animals before their ‘poop’ takes over the ark). And the The Five eBooks of Moses (iOS only; free) is an app that could be helpful to any newcomer to traditional Judaism, regardless of age — with 55 short animated videos that bring to life the words on the pages of the Bible.

Beyond the apps, G-dcast produces curriculum material being used by more than 4,000 teachers and educators, and its videos on all sorts of Jewish-related topics have garnered 1.5 million views on YouTube. Led by Sarah Lefton, a pioneer in the digital Jewish world, G-dcast started its work in 2008 and includes top staff from companies such as Apple, Pixar, the New York Times, SF Bay Guardian, Village Voice, and a variety of Hollywood production companies.

Equipped with all that knowledge, Jews who now know what they should be doing can now confess their failures in that regard — in other words, their sins — with another G-dcast app: eScapegoat. According to Jewish tradition, the High Priest would, in a special ceremony on Yom Kippur, offload all of Israel’s sins onto a special goat, the original scapegoat, that was thrown down a mountain. So eScapegoat, which was released last year, lets users anonymously admit their sins — which, according to the Jewish sages, is the first step in repenting.

““Despite high synagogue attendance on Yom Kippur, literacy of the scapegoat story in Leviticus is very low,” said Lefton. “This program is an easily accessible, fun way to engage people in thinking through the importance of personal and communal atonement rituals.” eScapegoat doesn’t ask for a user’s name, so the entire exchange is anonymous — in other words, your rabbi will not give you a funny look when you come to synagogue.

The sins themselves are available for all the world to see via eScapegoat’s Twitter feed, #SinfulGoat. Some of the most recent confessions: “I sort of cheated on you. We weren’t dating officially yet but it still felt like cheating,” “I said the ‘F’ word in front of my 6 year old,” “I use multiple email addresses to get discounts from the same company. I act as if I’m a new user every time,” “I silently judge people who take the elevator for one flight, if they seem capable,” and more — all anonymous, of course.

To make the repentance process even more accessible, Lefton this year came up with the idea of “Mini Goats” — versions of the app customized for individual communities, where members can share sins, stories, and behavioral goals. “We realized that private, ’walled-off‘ Mini Goats could be a powerful tool for communities because the interface really encourages sharing, and that gets more interesting within a smaller community,” Lefton said. “It lets people see what’s bubbling in their own backyards — all the regrets are so much more powerful when you know they belong to your neighbors and friends. It also creates a safe and private place for younger users in school settings.”

Besides all that, it gives G-dcast a way to monetize eScapegoat; the Mini Goat sites cost $99, complete with a “branded” goat featuring the organization’s logo and curricula for schools and youth groups about sin and repentance. At least 50 schools, synagogues, and other organizations across the US are using the service, G-dcast said.

Even though confession is a prerequisite to repentance, eScapegoat makes it clear that users need to go beyond the app, with a disclaimer that reads “No actual Halachic atonement implied” for users who admit their wrongdoings. In Judaism, the repentance process requires a resolution not to sin again, or at least to try to avoid sinning — and to symbolize that resolution, traditional Jews will “throw off” their sins on the first day of Rosh Hashana, in a ceremony called tashlich. Generally conducted next to a body of water, tashlich consists of several prayers evoking G-d’s mercy and expressing regret for sinning.

Tashlich is not an act of repentance in and of itself, but is meant to be a “summing up” of the repentance process, and a new free tashlich app from Jewish app maker RustyBrick will supply users with all the details they need to do that summing up — including providing them with Hebrew and English versions of the tashlich prayer, and sounding a notification when it should be said.

RustyBrick is one of the leading developers of Jewish apps for smartphones and tablets. Among the company’s offerings is a fully annotated English translation of the Babylonian Talmud, with English translation by the Mesorah (ArtScroll) publishing house, and its latest app, Minyan Now, lets users find or create a minyan, a prayer quorum of 10 Jewish males, anywhere at any time of the day.

Most recently, the company has been developing Jewish and Israel-oriented apps for Google Glass. Its most recent Glass offering was an app that alerted users when Hamas terrorists fired a rocket at Israel during the summer war in Gaza. It’s an example of what RustyBrick CEO Barry Schwartz said could be “Jewish experience” apps that utilized Glass technology to enhance experiences.

Glass is Google’s next generation Internet connection device, allowing users to access websites, read mail, watch videos, and much more without lifting a finger.

“We could have an app that would look at a package and see if it was kosher, based on the ingredients, or one that could give you information on the supervising rabbi,” said Schwartz. “We could also do automatic Hebrew and English translations — for example, we could do a visual translation of the Bible or Talmud as a person was reading.” Those platforms and databases already exist, thanks to the English translation of the Talmud and Bible, and Google Translate, so “putting together an app that draws on these sources wouldn’t be too difficult.”