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Prepent 5774: Day 28, Changing Your Passwords

The new year is a good reminder to safeguard your privacy

by
Amichai Lau-Lavie
September 04, 2013
(Tablet Magazine)
(Tablet Magazine)

Journey into the High Holidays with Amichai Lau-Lavie, founder of Storahtelling and the spiritual leader of Lab/Shul. It’s a daily dose of inspiration to get you focused and ready for the new year, featuring daily intentions, simple tasks, and tools for living better.

This may not seem like the most spiritual thing to do on the eve of a new year, but one of the sacred tasks I delegate this day to is the changing of passwords. It’s a good thing to do anyway, and events like this are good reminders; a new year and a new key into the realms of data and communication.

There is more to a password than just a security measure. Wise or whimsical, practical or easy, they can be simple reminders of our goals and intentions, or a wink to ourselves.

The most efficient passwords, I was recently told, are passphrase: “easily remembered, random, multi-word phrases are ten times more secure than the most secure random character, mixed case, number and symbol passwords. This is true because the phrases exist only in your mind.”

My new passphrase will be my intention for this coming year, in three words or less, with no spaces. ‘Sanctifythepractical,’ for instance.

At some point during the hectic hours before the sun sets on this old year, after thanking teachers, family, friends, and lovers for a year of gifts and growth—hopefully with some time left for picking up fresh flowers and doing a sound check—I hope to sit down quietly, for five minutes, conjure my new intention, condense into a passphrase, kiss the mezuza, click, and enter.

May we enter and exit in peace, a year of good intentions, safety, solidarity, and peace. Shana tova!

PS: Some helpful password management apps: 1PasswordKeeperKeePass, and LastPass.

Follow along with the Scroll’s daily Prepent series here.

Amichai Lau-Lavie is the founder of Storahtelling, and the spiritual leader of Lab/Shul, an emerging New York City congregation.