By Rabbi Phyllis Sommer

I giggled when I got to the airport this morning and found approximately half of the Jewish community of Chicago on my flight. Okay, just kidding...there were only about 10 people going to the Biennial. But it felt like a lot!

There is something wonderful and powerful about being in the airport (O'Hare) in a huge city (Chicago) and feeling like you know everyone.

In a sense, that is also what the Biennial is like for me. There are literally thousands of people here and yet I feel like I can't walk two feet without giving someone a hug! It's so wonderful to see so many Jews all in one place, to know that we all speak the same language (both literally and figuratively) and that we are all here together to celebrate our Jewish lives and our Jewish community.

As I write this, I'm sitting in a session on Web 2.0. I think this is one of the most interesting and powerful ideas out there right now, one of the most exciting ways to communicate and connect with people, with our congregants. Rabbi Paul Kipnes, of Or Am I? (he has a congregation, too, but I know him by his blog!) is giving a hands-on lesson in being cheeky on the web. He's right. Even this blog that you're now reading -- no one is (I hope) checking what we say or monitoring it...we are definitely being cheeky by allowing many people to communicate what they're feeling and seeing at the Biennial.