Grab this guide book and white-label event flyer, so you can put on a great inter-organizational multi-generational eclipse celebration for your Jewish Community
The Great American Eclipse will take place on April 8, 2024 in the afternoon.
In this episode Jacob Offers his vision of organizing Jewish organizations together to see the Eclipse on April 8, 2024.
Transcript
Jacob Sager 00:00:01 You are listening to space midrash. The space age has arrived, and our culture, our civilization, is unprepared. The narrative collapse is in effect. It can lead established culture to irrelevancy, or we can lead each other into the future. We want to become, I believe, in an artful and ethical humanity thriving amongst the cosmos. But we will only become those people if we tell the story that inspires us to become those people. I’m, um, your host, Jacob sager. This is Episode 22 of Space midrash titled The Great American Eclipse. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the great American eclipse, which will occur on April 8, 2024. We’ll go over the eclipse, the path of totality, the communities that will be affected. And I’ll share a vision that I have for how the great American eclipse can be this wonderful intergenerational experience for Jewish American communities by bringing together various organizations to the community centers across the path of totality. And I want to provide, through Space Midrash, resources for organizations, and I want to talk about those resources. Additionally, let’s talk about Jewish perspectives on an eclipse and what a Jewish perspective on an eclipse like this can be for a new generation. So you’re listening to space midrash. I’m Jacob sager. This is Episode 22 the Great American Eclipse. A great eclipse is coming. Our perspectives will change. Meaning is hard to come by in our postmodern bot supported life. It feels like you’ll never see it for yourself. However, natural wonders rekindle a preverbal understanding of things, your own sense of meaning. modernity deprioritizes wonders, even when they’re right overhead. That’s why I won’t shut up that for four minutes in the middle of the day on April 8, 2024, hundreds of millions of people can experience eclipse totality. So here’s my plan. I want to help real world communities care. I want to provide a framework for community organizations in the path of totality, to host events for organizations appealing to all the various generations that are alive right now. And lastly, I want to encourage everyone to take the day off, as I plan to do, and take my family to go watch at the special party out in kerrville with space industry folks and Jewish community leaders and artists as well. So my name is Jacob sager, and I remember when I was in kindergarten, there was going to be an eclipse, and it kept talking to us about it all week. And the librarian brought in the special
Jacob Sager 00:03:38 model of the earth and the sun and the moon to explain to us using light bulbs that were inside of it. And it was really exciting, and I was really excited. And guess what? When it was eclipse time, my class was at lunch, and we were inside. And that was just how school worked. And it didn’t matter that they got us really excited. By the time we were out for recess, the eclipse was over, and there was nothing to see, and that was that. And I don’t want that to happen again. In such a great opportunity for people to go see the eclipse, people of many generations, older people, younger people, to learn to experience the wonder of it. That is what I want to offer. And this is the vision that I have. Imagine that in the many American communities across Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and New York and Maine, that will be across the path of totality as they open up their campuses and they host all the various Jewish organizations and communities to come and visit them. There are youth conventions during this time that everyone would plan to take off of school and off of work. People would come and share music and art, that there would be opportunities for learning torah, and there’d be opportunities for being together and seeing something great and remembering it, ah, and telling it and sharing it and having it shape the rest of your year and the rest of your life. Because, uh, there’s something amazing about an eclipse, and I don’t actually know what it is personally yet, and I’m looking forward to it, and I want everyone else to discover it as well on that date. I want to create a real moment for community across time, in space, through the duration of this eclipse. Something that will be talked about for a long time, but not so that it’ll be talked about, but something that can soften our hearts and endear us to one another, that we can be in a great moment of natural wonder, in silence, or in whatever sound and emotion it will bring out of us. And we can be there together because we’re always moving forward 1 second at a time. And this eclipse will be going on for four minutes, which is rare and unusual for an eclipse. So let’s get together and let’s make a plan for your community to celebrate the eclipse. In older kind of mythological Jewish thinking, there was an association and a superstition of a bad omen. And even at a time that the moon and eclipses were calculated with a high level of accuracy going forward, very far into the future, that if
Jacob Sager 00:06:55 it’s a bad omen, or rather, it’s a time to reflect, that maybe things aren’t in good shape. Not necessarily a bad omen, but just a reflection that things are not necessarily so good that that actually is just the truth of life. It’s up and it’s down, and you have these moments to look up, and then what do you do other than be in deep awe and to think about everything, life, and to think about how we’re just floating through space. And yet you can understand it. And you can not just understand it. You can make an effort to be there with other people and celebrate it and celebrate it with them and talk about it for generations and have it mean something that’s huge. That’s what I want to create. So through space. midrash me. Jacob sager. I want to offer eclipse knowledge information for Jewish community organizations. We’re going to offer what you need to know about the eclipse, the planetary science, the physical science of what will happen on Earth at that time in your environment around you. What will look like? What will it feel like? How will animals react? The free resource for community organizations will also have health and safety guidelines how to properly allow people to enjoy in your community this eclipse without hurting themselves. We’ll also include in the frameworks for how you can put on eclipse events that really tie multi generations together in a community space, especially, um, multiple organizations. And lastly, we’ll give you a white label eclipse flyer so you can just adjust it and put out your organization’s event and let people within your community know that you’re going to put on an event for the eclipse. So everyone saved the date. April 8, 2024. The Great American Eclipse. If you are in the path of totality, then make an event. If you are not in the path of totality, find an event to go to or help create one. And everyone take off that day. Don’t go to school. Don’t go to work. Make plans to be there to see the eclipse, to be there with people you love, with people you just met, with people you care about, with people who are there next to you and see that eclipse and have it change your life and tell that story moving forward. My name is Jacob. I believe in an ethical humanity artfully thriving amongst the cosmos. But I know that we’ll only become those people if we tell the story that inspires us to become those people. Thank you so much for listening. This episode of Space Midrash was directed by me, JacobSager, right here on
Jacob Sager 00:09:41 planet Earth and produced by brand new Colors
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