Muscles rippling under a thin white t-shirt, head bowed beneath a polyester-sateen kippah, New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman prayed at Jerusalem’s Western Wall in a new year greeting posted to social media. Say that sentence six times and your ancestors will rise from their graves and start a spontaneous hora. Edelman, a 32-year-old…
All of Jewish tradition can be summed up in one handy (and corny) adage: ‘They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.’ But not on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, when Jews often choose to fast for a grueling 25 hours, spent without the comfort of a warm bagel, a piece…
Like many families, I go into the Jewish holiday season with some sense of sorrow and regret. There is nothing sad about these holidays themselves — even Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and forgiveness is pervaded with a sense of hopefulness and expectation that God will forgive us and inscribe us in the “book…
Arnie Gluck has served the congregation Temple Beth-El of Hillsborough, New Jersey, for 28 years. Sarah Gluck, who is married to Rabbi Gluck, is in her 18th year as the synagogue’s director of education. Shira, the couple’s younger daughter, is in her final year of study at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, where she…
Yom Kippur is known as the day of atonement, and it’s one of the holiest days in Judaism (besides my Bar Mitzvah and Jon Stewart’s birthday). It’s a time for reflection, forgiveness and self-improvement. With our weeks filled with deadlines, to-do lists and texts we forgot to return, Yom Kippur provides a much needed time…
Yom Kippur begins just before sundown this Tuesday, September 18, and ends after sundown on Wednesday, September 19. In the course of the day you may pray. You may sing. You may prostrate. You may book end the experience on one side by swinging a chicken, and on the other by immediately and enthusiastically building…
As the Days of Awe roll around, we find ourselves repeating two traditional confession prayers — Al Chet and Ashamnu — many times throughout Selichot (penitential prayers) and Yom Kippur. What makes this year different from other years? This year, we enter the High Holiday season with the painful memories of #MeToo, fresh wounds of…
I’ve co-parented with a husband I loved, a husband with whom I was miserable but who was on the same parental page as me, and an ex-husband who was my good friend. Now, for the first time, I am co-parenting with an ex-husband with whom I have an acrimonious relationship and who has increasingly divergent ideas from my…
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