WORDS THAT BREATHE

Teen Dani, an 11th grader, shared her mental health journey (through depression) to an overflowing synagogue on Yom Kippur.

The mother died four days after her daughter became Bat Mitzvah. And then I had it out with God.

What are Isaac's thoughts on the Akedah, when his dad almost sacrificed him? A first person perspective about sons and fathers.

Embracing complexity and nuance: Talking to your family friends whose opinions you hate.

Sara Lee's wisdom and truth-telling  transformed what once was an anxiety-filled season of frenetic High Holiday scrambling into a more introspective period of thoughtful High Holy Day preplanning and ultimately deeper meaning. 

As a house-sized iceberg was calved from the Alaskan glacier, we discovered poignant lessons for the Jewish High Holy Days.

Brad Halpern of Congregation Or Ami, Calabasas, CA reflects on the meaning of holding Torah on Kol Nidre.

Wouldn’t your heart soar too, if children left the High Holy Day children’s program and services kvelling? When older teens lead and mentor younger teen leaders, they felt energized as they passed on the responsibility of Jewish educational leadership to their younger peers?

Lessons learned while taking their last breaths. Reflections on bikkur cholim (visiting the sick) with David and Jerry. A Yom Kippur sermon.

Be Chesed. In the midst of this election, choose unlimited overflowing love as your response. My Rosh Hashanah sermon

Halloween Torah: The Akedah is a bloodcurdling tale of a menacing father who almost murders his kid, a nightmare waiting to keep you up all night.

Youth engagement succeeds when teens have real life responsibility for their own Jewish learning. After years of adequate adult-led youth services we reached out to our teens. Their involvement as High Holy Day service leaders resulted in more spiritually engaging youth services and also the development of a cadre of teens capable of leading their younger peers in meaningful worship.

Do you know what happens when we fail to correctly differentiate between need and want? In the space between those two concepts, that’s where sin is born.

We can listen better. Especially us, Jews and Jewish families, who are heirs to a tradition of compassion that calls us to bear witness to the vulnerable. Listen to people of color, to people struggling through life, to the people next door.

Be the blessing you intended to be and buck the trend. When deciding whether to kvetch or kvell about the High Holy Day services, be a kveller.

Your spiritual homework for the High Holy Days is to review your relationships and to begin the process of cleaning them up.

Judaism teaches us 6 steps of teshuvah. The High Holy Days are a reminder for those procrastinators among us to get moving on this life-fixing process. These 6 steps of teshuvah are distillation of the medieval rabbi Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance.

Cleaning out closets for Rosh Hashana leads us to the real work of the Hebrew month of Elul, preparing ourselves spiritually for the High Holy Days.

Teshuvah (turning) is the process of making your life better, particularly on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It's time to start turning.