More great NYT covereage:
The organizers think people should feel free to get as heavy or keep it as light as they like. One of their favorite responses from last year to a question about an importantspiritual experience: “I lost God, and I’ve never been happier.”
More in the New York Times: Ten Significant Questions for the Days of Awe
Atonement is apparently hot these days: Serena Williams apologized on her blog for losing it with a line judge during the semifinals of the United States Open, and Kanye West expressed remorse to a priestlike Jay Leno.
But their examples are not why I asked Mr. Espada the question; I posed it to him because it’s one of 10 thought-provoking questions that Reboot, a Jewish nonprofit organization, is disseminating mostly via a Web site called doyou10Q.com.
Read more of this excellent article, including answers to 10Q questions by several celebs, here – Susan Dominus for the New York Times: Atonement and Reflection in a Digital Era
…participants respond personally to each of the questions at www.DoYou10Q.com, and at the end of the ten-day question period the answers are sent to a secure, confidential online vault for safekeeping. One year later, participants will receive their answers via email and can be reminded of all those resolutions that they completely forgot about. Organize my closet? Really? Oops.
What’s cool about this…is how unusual a use of Times Square billboard space this is — rarely is such valuable advertising real estate commandeered for open-ended questions geared not for profit or consumption but introspection and self-actualization. It’s a far cry from the usual use of that space — and a far cry from the pace of Times Square, which is as frenetic as the average New Yorker’s life…
…10Q, at www.DoYou10Q.com, [is] the brainchild of New Yorker editor Ben Greenman and filmmaker Nicola Behrman. The 10Q program is what the Days of Atonement might look like if they’d been invented today: an automated online system that coughs up a new, open-ended question and sends it out daily by email on each of the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They’re like little missives of conscience from an all-knowing and unknowable source. Responses go into a form on the site, and at the end of Yom Kippur—when, according to the rabbinic texts, the gates of repentance have closed for another year—they vanish into a secure server, only to reappear in their owners’ email inboxes in a year’s time. In other words, it’s a psychological time capsule, in written form.
To read the article and a sample of questions and answers from last year’s 10Q batch: Tablet: Reflection 2.0
Flavorpill: Can you explain the religious roots of the project?
Ben Greenman: I met co-creator Nicola Behrman at one of Reboot’s events; they try to pair people in different disciplines to work on projects. We were talking through some issues: technology; how people don’t really have space to think in the same way they used to; how that might be corrected. The initial version of 10Q evolved out of that.
The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time to think about the year that passed, and let go of grudges — broadly speaking it’s the same kind of thing as the New Year. You put aside whatever bad things have happened. A lot of things about the secular New Year have become problematic. Because of parties, and, you know, our friend alcohol, we leave the reflection part out.
Flavorwire: Exclusive Q&A: Ben Greenman Explains Why He’s Taking Over Times Square
NEW YORK, NY September 17, 2009 — On the first day of Rosh Hashanah tomorrow, anyone who looks up at the billboards and marquees of Times Square will be able to participate in a bit of Jewish tradition. The Web service 10-Q, which stands for 10 questions, will project a question a day on a huge electronic screen for each of the 10 days of the Jewish high holidays. Traditionally, they’re a time to reflect on the past year and plan improvements for the year ahead.
10Q is for everyone:
I’m not religious, and my knowledge of the ins and outs of Judaism is limited, but apparently the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is supposed to be a time of reflection. And wouldn’t you know it – there’s a site all ready to help you reflect in a suitably web 2.0 way.
A Jewish group known as REBOOT, which says its aim is to revitalize “a new generation to explore and redefine Jewish identity, community, and meaning,” will light up the billboard in Times Square with a question a day for ten days. These will be big questions like, “Is there something you wish you had done differently this past year?”
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Inspired viewers can then go to a web site where they can contemplate the question at length, submit their answers and then, in a 2009-combo-New Years Resolution/fortune cookie-sort of way, check back in a year to see how their answers held up over time.
USA Today: What’s More Jewish Than Asking Questions?
10Q in Times Square!
Starting September 18, anyone who looks up to the marquees and flashing lights of Times Square will be faced with life’s big questions. Interspersed with the car commercials and women’s lingerie ads, 10Q’s annual question and reflection campaign will be displayed on PR Newswire’s giant electronic billboard, asking passersby a question a day for 10 days.
Questions range from, “Is there something you wish you had done differently this past year?” to “What global event most affected you last year, and why?” This interactive digital installation, a companion to the 10Q website (www.DoYou10Q.com), is designed to make viewers contemplate some of life’s most important questions.
New York Blueprint: “Jumbotron Brings High Holidays to Times Square”
10Q questions will be featured on a Times Square jumbotron, that’s huge! Check it out –
Social Workout: “Viral Web Hit 10Q Asks New York to Take Stock“