CIJA takes campaign public
I love the High Holidays and the opportunity they present to get together with extended family, to visit with friends and to reach out to colleagues. In addition to the special foods of the season, it’s a time to remember…
High Holidays
Value of community
When we hear about addiction and recovery, most of us might think of the incredibly difficult journey to achieve and then sustain sobriety. For certain, this is one reality. That said, it’s one thing to refrain from using, and quite…
A yearly reminder to return
Family friends in their 80s just came over to visit. It was perhaps their first time at our house in a year or so. They’ve been busy. They had a family member move back to Winnipeg, there’s been a pandemic…
About the Rosh Hashanah cover art
I spent hours online trying to find a suitable piece of art for this year’s Rosh Hashanah cover, then even more hours for what I might do myself. I really wanted to include a shofar in whatever I did, as…
Teshuvah: a guide to repentance
Twelfth-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides described the sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call for the soul. (photo from flickr.com/photos/gsankary) The sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the great 12th-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides wrote,…
Bafflement part of life
Just as in life outside shul we don’t understand everything we encounter, we don’t all necessarily understand the Torah reading and other parts of the High Holiday service. The High Holidays serve as a metaphor for life itself. (photo from…
Zoom into the future?
We have now finished our second consecutive cycle of High Holidays under the cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, unlike last, plenty of grandparents were able to hug their grandkids, thanks to vaccines. In-person gatherings were possible in different…
Relationship with the earth
At the dinner table, I asked my family what I should write. One of my kids, age 10, immediately said, “Climate change. People think the problem’s all hot air, but the problem’s really hot water.” There was a smirk at…
Need to value what we have
Every fall, we go apple picking. For my husband and me, it was one of our first dates, apple picking together in upstate New York. Over time, it has become a family outing, with each kid eating lots of fresh…
More positives than expected
We often use the High Holidays for self-reflection. Consider, we’re urged, the year that has passed and the future. For me, the pandemic and its uncertainty has made me less focused on the year to come. Instead, I’ve been taking…
