(RNS) — The 8 a.m. service starts with a litany of gratitude, which unfurls in the chat function of the online Zoom:
“Grateful to be awake.”
“Grateful for the last day of school.”
“Grateful for this morning to pray.”
“Grateful for morning minyan.”
On the main screen, the prayer leader, typically a rabbi, begins to chant blessings and psalms from the Jewish morning service. In the gallery, participants sit in front of their laptops, some with prayer shawls draped over their shoulders, others with the video turned off and only a profile picture or a name.
So begins the 30-minute morning service offered through the Los Angeles-based IKAR Synagogue six days a week. Jewish tradition prescribes prayer three times a day, but for many in L.A. and beyond, this morning service has become their primary form of community and prayer — as necessary as a morning cup of coffee.
The service offers Jews with varying degrees of observance an opportunity to say the central prayer of Jewish life — the Shema — and for some to recite the kaddish, or mourner’s prayer, which Jews are required to say daily for 11 months after the death of a family member.
Initially a stopgap measure during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virtual ser …