One of the things we did together at the second meeting of my Rabbis Without Borders fellows cohort was work together, in small groups, on making video vorts. "Vort" is the Yiddish word for "word;" a vort, in this context, is a word of Torah, a wee spoken-word teaching.

I haven't experimented with video. The other social media we'd been talking about -- twitter, Facebook, etc -- are pretty solidly in my wheelhouse, but video is a new one for me. And it turned out to be fun. Maybe because we were doing it together, as friends and colleagues, and all of us were stretching ourselves in one way or another.

Several of us showed our videos to our cohort, and talked about them -- who we thought the audience of each one was meant to be, what worked and what we could do better next time, etc.  Showing my video to my cohort emboldened me, so I decided to share it here, too, even though it isn't perfect.

Embedded below: Two minutes of me talking about one of my favorite mitzvot, the bedtime shema. I describe the mitzvah, explain how it manifests in my life, and talk about how I know when it's working.

If you can't see the embedded video, above, you can watch the video here at YouTube. Let me know what you think: is this a useful way for me to share occasional very short teachings here?