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Question: On Sukkot, we remember our ancestors' struggles to balance their lives with the surrounding environment in order to produce a bountiful harvest each year. But most of us no longer grow our own food or live at the mercy of natural phenomena in the same ways.

Yom Kippur, 1965, I was a Navy medical officer stationed aboard a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam. 

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a concept I came to understand in my early adult years. But this was my understanding during my childhood:

by Rabbi Elisa F. Koppel I’m not ashamed to admit it: I like shoes. I’m not quite obsessive about them, but I probably have more pairs of shoes than I need, and I’m always finding new ones – you know, the ones that would be perfect with that one outfit.

When I started a new chapter in my life as a freshman at Indiana University (Go Hoosiers!), I met people left and right.

As Jews, we approach every autumn with the understanding that a new year is starting and that the High Holy Days are up and coming. In between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, we observe the Days of Awe, or the Yamim Noraim.

Turn the Torah scroll.
Turn back to Genesis
for the Rosh Hashana reading.

As the Torah scroll is rolled,
one person is on one side
pulling forward -
back to the beginning.
One person is on the other side
releasing the past.