The eScapegoat app. Photo: G-dcast.

JNS.org – After launching the eScapegoat app last year—allowing users to prepare for Yom Kippur by offloading their sins to a virtual goat, mirroring the ancient repentance ritual—the San Francisco-based new media studio G-dcast has rolled out the 2.0 version of the app ahead of the 2014 High Holidays.

The new version of the app is “brighter, sleeker, bouncier, and teaches even more about those storied scapegoats,” according to a press release.

“Despite high synagogue attendance on Yom Kippur, literacy of the scapegoat story in Leviticus is very low,” Sarah Lefton, founder and executive director of G-dcast, said in a statement. “This program is an easily accessible, fun way to engage people in thinking through the importance of personal and communal atonement rituals.”

Also new this year are “Mini Goats”—custom websites for individual communities to share sins, stories, and behavioral goals. The new package is meant to enable entities such as synagogues, schools, and youth groups to focus their reflection and deepen community connections.

Communities that purchase the Mini Goat package ($99) will receive a custom, private goat website that synagogues and organizations can moderate with a login; a virtual goat with the community logo; space on the mini-site to include community event information (classes, Yom Kippur service times, etc.); and curricular support materials, including activities for different age groups.

To use the eScapegoat app, click here. To read some of the sins already shared through eScapegoat, click here.