What's Happening in the Torah? Rosh HaShanah Activities for Families
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.
Colleagues, friends and family gather to remember Rabbi David J. Forman
Beyond Apples and Honey
Quick Honey Cake
One summer, I went to the store and no honey cakes could be found. What to do? I combined a standard gingerbread cake mix with some main ingredients in honey cake - coffee and honey - and an easy, quick honey cake was born!
Finding My Chosen Family
I pulled up to the right home, parked the car, unbuckled my 1-year old son from his car seat and walked across the front yard. As I approached, I noticed a blonde woman with curly hair, a large green turtle swimming pool, and a toddler.
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