What's Happening in the Torah? Rosh HaShanah Activities for Families
5780: Our Annual Rosh HaShanah Sermon Roundup
Typically, at some point in my work on this project, my wife will lean over my shoulder and ask me, in her own style, “So. How are the Jews this year?” Some years that is a difficult question to answer. This year the answer is clear: The Jews are afraid.
Pursuing Social Justice: Yom Kippur Activities for Families
Creating New Rituals and Tradition for the School Year and the New Year
For children, traditions and rituals are significant; they provide predictability, support, and familiarity, while bringing families together and creating unity and a sense of belonging.
Habari Gani? How My Family is Melding Kwanzaa and Hanukkah Customs
Our Migrant First Family: Abraham Passed the Test, but Will We?
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, presented this sermon on Rosh HaShanah morning, saying, "We need to face something so odious that we will try to avert our eyes. But we must not."
Beyond Apples and Honey
How I Became a Pioneer for Women's Equality at my Synagogue
Although my 13th birthday was in August of 1974, I became bat mitzvah in June of that year because my parents didn’t want me to worry about studying while at Camp Ramah in the Poconos over the summer.
Let’s start with a little historical context.
The New Reform Machzor and the Shofar Service
The traditional High Holy Day prayer book, as opposed to the Reform versions produced in the last century and more, includes a service, musaf, that evokes the ancient sacrifices. Reform Judaism abandoned this service, due to its musty connotations of “barbarian” rites but a key element of this service on Rosh Hashanah, the sounding of the shofar was maintained. Sounding of the shofar was retained no doubt because the very essence of Rosh Hashanah is bound up in the peal of the shofar. Can you imagine Rosh Hashanah without it
The Shofar Service: Malchiyot, Zichronot, Shofarot
The blowing of the shofar is surely one of the high points of the Rosh Hashanah morning service. But the “Shofar Service” as the discrete entity we know today is actually a creation of Reform liturgists. Located at the end of the Torah service, before the Torah is returned to the ark, and including the three sections of Malchiyot (biblical verses dealing with God’s Sovereignty), Zichronot (biblical verses dealing with God’s Attentiveness), andShofarot (biblical verses dealing with the sounding of the Shofar), this is a synthesis of two different pieces of traditional liturgy