High-Tech Celebration of Ancient Rite : Yom Kippur: Wilshire Boulevard Temple uses an interactive multimedia presentation in marking the Day of Atonement.

Employing late 20th-Century technology to give relevance to an ancient rite, congregants at Wilshire Boulevard Temple on Thursday observed Yom Kippur--the most solemn day of the Jewish year--with an experimental interactive multimedia presentation.

While congregations throughout the Southland spent Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in moving and traditional services, congregants at the landmark Wilshire temple followed their customary morning service with an hour of soul-searching aided by the high-tech program.

It was a first for the Reform congregation, complete with images flashed on a giant screen, readings by members of the congregation, and a mixture of music from rock to folk.

As high-tech as the program may have seemed, Senior Rabbi Harvey J. Fields said its roots could be traced to small villages in Europe in which faithful Jews in years past would interrupt their prayers on Yom Kippur, leave the sanctuary and go into an adjacent room to confess their sins to one another and beg forgiveness.

Today, Fields said, most congregants do not have an opportunity to discuss such themes after Yom Kippur services.

“I felt that people needed to have an opportunity to come out of the sanctuary and deal with some of the issues confronted in the sanctuary--sinfulness, the waste of the world’s energy and the lack of appreciation for the essential beauty of the garden in which we live,” said Fields, who wrote the program.

For example, as congregants meditated on the theme that “all that is left to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror,” scenes of environmental pollution, military armaments, an exploding nuclear bomb and urban slums filled a giant screen in the temple’s Piness Auditorium. In the background, rock music blared.

At another point emphasizing the holiness of God, there were panoramic film clips of thundering waterfalls, schools of fish and boiling white cumulus clouds filmed in time-lapse photography.

The scenes were interspersed with readings by Fields and individual congregants who played the role of 36 pious people commenting on the state of the world--and of their souls.

The number 36 comes from the Babylonian Talmud, Fields said, which says there are at least 36 pious people in the world who every day see the face of God. They are said to be the vessels into which the suffering of the world flows. If even one of them were not here, the Talmud holds, the world would perish with suffering.

The dialogue, Fields said, is intended to prepare one for the final moments of repentance before “the closing of the gates” at the end of Yom Kippur. It is said that on Yom Kippur, God seals the Book of Life, which is inscribed at Rosh Hashanah.

The presentation appeared to be well-received by the estimated 600 congregants who participated.

Steven Ellis of Los Angeles said afterward that he found the presentation “very meaningful and moving . . . another way to get at some of the messages.”

Rochelle Ginsburg of Beverly Hills said she may share a particular passage with students at the school where she is an assistant principal. “It was powerful. I thought it sent an important message,” she said.

“If you have done a little wrong to another, let it be a giant wrong in your eyes,” the passage said. “Go and rectify it. If you have done much good, let it be little in your eyes. If another has done you a little good, let it be great in your eyes. If another has done you a giant wrong, let it be a little in your eyes.”

Fields said he first experimented with a multimedia presentation in 1974 when he was a rabbi in New Jersey. He rewrote it for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple congregation.

Yom Kippur--a time of fasting, prayer, introspection and personal confession--began at sundown Wednesday and ended at sundown Thursday. It marked the close of the High Holy Days observances that began on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Sept. 6.