Within two weeks of halting in-person activities, Shaare Torah held its first virtual pandemic poker tournament and 50 community members participated including significant participation from Har Shalom Men’s Club members. The buy-in for the tournament was $20 with $15 going to the prize pool and $5 going to the Hesed fund. In addition, some winners donated all or part of their winners to the Hesed or Men’s Club funds. The tournaments have been held once or twice a month. One key aspect was the creation and use of a zoom during the tournament, so it allowed all the players to talk with one another throughout the tournament and players continuously kept their video on to increase engagement. In terms of metrics, we held 15 virtual poker nights since March 2020 which included a total of 345 players (80 unique players) and raised $1, 895 for the Shaare Torah Hesed Fund. Recognizing the early success of the program, several steps were taken to expand this type of programming:
1) Shaare Torah President and Pandemic Poker Co-Chair David Freiman presented the program to the Seaboard FJMC complete with detailed instructions on how to implement the program (attached).
2) To attract non-poker players and more families, the model was used to implement virtual trivia nights that attracted a different set of Shaare Torah members (over 100 members in total) and provided a great opportunity for family engagement.
3) Recognizing the ability for virtual Men’s Club engagement, the Shaare Torah Shlichah, Rotem Ur, partnered with the Men’s Club Co-Presidents to virtually create a Men’s Club Purim Dance that was shown in each Purim service and truly brought out laughter and joy in the community. Each of 10 members virtually recorded a dance choreographed by Rotem and then Rotem edited the 10 different videos together. Prior to the individual recordings, 2 zoom sessions were held for the 10 “dancers” to learn the dance and engage with one another. The virtually created Purim dance was really a culmination of Men’s Club virtual engagement programs that all started with the Pandemic Poker tournaments and gave people that needed sense of communities during periods of quarantine and physical isolation from one another. The Purim dance can be viewed here:https://youtu.be/B5gBfVWAvOo