The famed digital media, film and music festival is back live in Austin
One could be forgiven, with everything in the news these days, in missing that the internationally popular South by Southwest (SXSW) festival was beginning again. However, after a two-year hiatus, the digital media, film and music festival is back in Austin for its first in-person gathering since 2019.
And with its return comes the #openShabbat meal hosted in conjunction with festival activities. A project of Tech Tribe, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based affiliate of Chabad Young Professionals, the Shabbat meal has attracted as many as 300 attendees in previous years and is on target to surpass that number this year. Attendees are afforded a chance to sit, eat, schmooze, and “unplug” from 10 days of uber-connectedness.
According to Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, who runs Tech Tribe together with his wife, Chana, the #openShabbat meal at SXSW couldn’t come at a better time.
“In the past several years, we’ve witnessed this change in how society relates to technology,” says Lightstone. “What was once this aura of technoptomism—this sense that tech could do no wrong and would build this bigger, brighter future for society—has been replaced by a sense of cynicism about the darker side of technology.”
But while acknowledging the realities of a world where Big Data and Big Tech can be used for nefarious purposes, Lightstone sees the current moment as a crossroads for the future of technology.
“We’re at a point where we realize how technology, unmoored from deeper meaning and higher morals, can be this incredibly corrosive force,” explains Lightstone. “However, when it is mined for meaning and purpose—when the goodness isn’t just the tagline at the end of the pitch, but the actual core focus of the product—then there is this incredible potential for truly profound good.”
To that effect, Tech Tribe will be bringing the ARK program to SXSW as an official part of the festival’s programming. ARK, which stands for Acts of Random (or Routine) Kindness, is a play on the traditional tzedakah box created by Change Our World for Good.
“An algorithm is only as good as its data,” says Lightstone, referring to the idea that artificial intelligence can only build off initial information it’s fed. “In order to build apps and technology that is truly transformative, we need to live lives endowed with actual goodness and meaning.”
ARK, which easily lends itself to a daily ritual of giving, allows the user to center their lives on the practice of charitable giving on a daily basis.
The messaging of incorporating goodness and giving every day will be brought to the festival street on a Mitzvah Tank staffed by two rabbinical students under the auspices of Rabbi Mendy and Mussie Levertov of Chabad Young Professionals of Austin.
“I’m excited to see how people take this concept of giving and really incorporate it into their own lives,” says Lightstone. As to his own ark? He notes that he’ll be filling it up for Chabad’s Ukraine Jewish Relief Fund.
Michaela Jacobsberg-Reiss, director of Product Partnerships at AppLovin, is excited to attend #openShabbat. A past collaborator with Lightstone on various Jewish projects, she sees it as the ultimate expression of SXSW and the future of tech.
“SXSW is all about the celebration of culture and togetherness from art to tech,” she says. “If there’s anything we learned from the last two years of navigating life during a global pandemic and witnessing the tragedies unfolding in Ukraine today, it is the importance of community, like Tech Tribe, and sticking together. This is why this event is so important, and I know great things will come of it.”
#openShabbat is made possible this year through Tech Tribe’s supporters and a partnership with OurCrowd and The Kiddush Club NFT with wine sponsored by Jezreel Valley Winery and additional funding from OneTable.
For a seat at the Shabbat meal on March 11, click here.
