Rosh Hashanah
Click on the image to get to a link to purchase Shema Bekolah: The High Holiday Collection. Included are four of my essays along with many other thoughtful and inspiring writings.
Link to JOFA’s High Holiday Collection Read More »
how can you inhabit these weary limbs, this upended life . . . (click image to read more)
POEM: Teshuva Also Means Response Read More »
This is how God speaks to human beings. Maybe the shofar’s wordless sounds come to teach us to honor the inarticulate strrings inside us that have come to heal us and bring us home. (Click image to read more)
QUICK THOUGHT: Listening to the Shofar Inside (Rosh Hashanah) Read More »
On Rosh Hashanah, God is described as making a shift — moving from the throne of judgment to throne of compassion. Perhaps our teshuva can be modeled on God’s. (Click image to read more)
QUICK THOUGHT: From Judgment to Compassion (Rosh Hashanah) Read More »
Parashat Nitzavim is always read on the shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, and in it, quite fittingly, is a poignant passage that speaks of the process of teshuva, of our return to God and to the land, after a long period of distancing and exile and scattering. The passage (Deuteronomy 30:1-10) uses the root שוב,
WOW (Word of the Week): שוב, Return (Parashat Nitzavim and Rosh Hashanah) Read More »
Below is a meditation script on the topic of shofar blowing. The long steady Tekiah sounds of the shofar always surround the more broken sounds of the shevarim and the teruah . . . (Click image to read more)
MEDITATION SCRIPT: The Tekiah Container for Our Brokenness (Rosh Hashanah) Read More »
Tekiah shevarim-teruah Tekiah. The long steady Tekiah sounds of the shofar always surround the other more broken sounds of the shevarim and the teruah. In this meditation, we consider the shevarim and teruah sounds to represent our brokenness and suffering, and the Tekiahs that stand on either side to represent the divine container
MEDITATION: The Tekiah Container for Our Brokenness (Rosh Hashanah) Read More »
I’ve been suffering a lot lately over my children. Nothing extreme is going on with them, but each one has his or her life challenges and suffering to go through, and I find it painful to watch. In looking through the readings for the two days of Rosh Hashanah, it strikes me that a
SHORT ESSAY: Handling Our Children’s Suffering (Rosh Hashanah) Read More »
Through the inner work of teshuva, some shift happens inside oneself with respect to these sins — “they become for him” something different, something better; they start out seeming like sins but they end up, in an atmosphere of love, seeming like merits. (Click image to read more)
SHORT ESSAY: Turning Misdeeds into Merits (Teshuvah) Read More »
One thing bothers me about the story of the Akedah — its end. In the story, Avraham endures an unimaginable trial of faith, successfully demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice even his beloved, long-awaited son to God. But how does the story conclude? Avraham is rewarded for his faith. His son is not sacrificed and
SHORT ESSAY: Akedah: On Faith and Happy Endings (Rosh Hashanah) Read More »