Galilee Diary: Fade to Black
The Lord, the Lord is gracious and compassionate, patient, and abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and granting pardon. -Exodus 34:6-7
Not the Usual Barnes and Noble Minhag
Like so many of the things we've done in the last few months, the annual Yom Kippur afternoon jaunt of my father and me to Barnes and Noble following the morning service at temple was
For Yom HaShoah: A Journey of Return and a Search for Bones
On Yom HaShoah, which falls on April 28, I will remember the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust – and I will be thinking about a little town in the northeast corner of Lithuania, and a white-haired man searching for a
Giving Meaning to Holocaust Remembrance
Much ink has been spilled since the release of the Pew Research Center survey on Jewish identity in the United States.
Yom HaShoah: A Call for Memory that Animates Action
Zachor. A powerful imperative to remember. An anthem in opposition to forgetting. A symbol of the Jewish approach to history: zachor, remember, remember as if you experienced it yourself.
To Honor, To Bless, To Name
Recently I read about a newly published book that lists every single one of the six million people killed during the Holocaust.
The Relationship Between Prayer and Your Imagination
When the words of liturgy are taken too literally, the sacred power of prayer is often lost. In his latest book, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman offers a way worshipers can transcend the limitations imposed by language.
Why I Love the “Once-a-Year" Jews
I imagine how Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur services feel to shul regulars: a fashion-show of strangers, preening, talking, walking in and out, coming late, and leaving early.
The High Holidays Tradition I Vowed Not to Repeat
Jewish law says we are to fast on Yom Kippur. This is based on the biblical law that on the Day of Atonement, “You shall afflict yourselves” (Lev.
How Baseball Can Help Us Fulfill the Call of the High Holidays
Two specific events produced more Jewish pride than anything else in the turbulent decade of the 1960s: Sandy Koufax’s refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur in 1965, and not quite two years later, the Six Day War in June