March 9th: In Peace and Love

My phone has been a terrible problem for the past several months. I’ve been dropping calls, failing to send texts, and unable to do simple tasks using my apps (first world problems, I know). As a last ditch effort to try to make things move a little more quickly, I performed a factory reset on my phone.

While this action didn’t really help my phone much (it’s still most useful as a paperweight), I did get the opportunity to reload the apps that were important to me and leave certain things off that I had no intention of ever using again.

Another of the elements of the phone that went away with the clean reset was my autosignature. For the last four years, I have had a message inscribed at the bottom of all of my text messages. It simply read “BSVA AZ.” BSVA stood for B’Shalom V’Ahavah, a Hebrew phrase meaning “In Peace and Love,” followed by my initials.

This notion arose when, as a junior in high school, I wrote a service for NFTY that involved the intersection between text messaging and prayer. I gave a D’var Torah (a sermon) on the fact that we, as teens, have the opportunity to make a religious connection with all facets of our lives, and that something as basic or mundane as texting can hold a far greater significance to our lives. As part of this service, I added my autosignature to my phone as a way to embody what I was talking about.

For the next four years, it was a constant reminder. I was always able to see that, whatever was the root of my conversation, my religious identity was not far away. The URL of this very blog page, bsvaaz.blogspot.com, was derivative of my call to action, an action I too took up.

It wasn’t always an easy thing. There were times when my texting mates would get irritated with the repetitive message, and there were those who simply didn’t understand why this was an important part of my communication identity. I spent a good number of characters explaining to people why it was there and what it meant to me.

In recent months, I realized I was spending more and more time considering whether I even wanted to include the phrase. There are times when my religious identity would be a hinderance to the conversation, a distractor rather than helpful. I struggled with whether or not to keep what had become a significant part of my relationship with media.

With the clean slate phone, though, I’ve decided not to replace it. There are many reasons why I think this is best for me, but first and foremost is my relationship with my religious identity. As a young person, I have always needed to find ways to keep God and my religious relationship close at hand. As I grow more and more comfortable in my beliefs, they also grow more available to me. As a Jewish Studies major, a rabbinic hopeful, and an intern in the leadership of Reform Judaism, I don’t have a hard time remembering to keep Judaism in mind.

Another important element is my understanding of communication. The intersection between religious practice and media communications is something that religious teens and college students have been struggling with for a long time. There are a multitude of possible solutions and I’m excited to have the opportunity to go out and explore other opportunities to connect to my community, my religion, and my belief in God.

While my autosignature may no longer hang at the bottom of every text, I keep the sentiment clear in my communications. I can’t wait to see what I can do next to keep my Judaism and my faith close at hand.

BSVA AZ