When Teshuvah Feels Impossible

Sep 19, 2025 By Noam Blauer | Nitzavim | Rosh Hashanah

Are we really being set up for success for this whole teshuvah business? We might commit to doing all the preparation—journaling, going to shul, talking to therapists, chatting with rabbis, calling up hurt family and friends, New Year’s resolutions, etc.—and it still feels inadequate. Am I actually morally transformed? I am some infinitesimally small fraction of a hypermodern, global, complex network. My actions bear consequences for people on the other side of the globe I will never meet and whose names I will never even know. I still need to bring teshuvah to bear on my most intimate relationships,  but is this millennia-old process suitable to the messiness and uncertainty of modern moral life?

Jews, Non-Jews, and the Purpose of the High Holidays

Sep 16, 2025 By David C. Kraemer | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

The Amidah for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur presents a striking, even radical, vision: a world where God alone reigns, where all people—Jewish and not—live in peace, and oppressive regimes vanish. In this vision, the Jewish people are neither erased nor centered. Instead, they are part of a broader human hope. 

The Blessing of Curses: A Rosh Hashanah Puzzle

Sep 12, 2025 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Ki Tavo | Rosh Hashanah

Here’s a puzzle for us to think about as we consider the spiritual work that we need to engage in over the remaining days until Yom Kippur: The Talmud tells us—in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar—that Ezra the Scribe decreed that, for all time, the Jewish people would read the blessings and curses in Leviticus (Parashat Behukkotai) prior to the holiday of Shavuot and those of Deuteronomy (Parashat Ki Tavo) before Rosh Hashanah (BT Megillah 31b). This decree is strange. Reading these graphic and threatening chapters, which detail the good that will come if we are faithful to God and the suffering that will be wrought if we forsake our relationship with God, is difficult at any time. Why insist that we read them publicly as we ready ourselves to celebrate these joyous holidays?

Beyond the Sermon: What the High Holiday Prayers Offer and Demand

Sep 8, 2025 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

We begin our High Holiday webinar series with guidance for how to engage more meaningfully in the prayer part of High Holiday services. Famously long and repetitive, services on these days may sometimes feel overwhelming, boring, or even alienating. In this session, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts at JTS, offered practical strategies for participating more fully, and insight into what these services really ask of us and what they offer—especially in tumultuous uncertain times. Along the way, Rabbi Uhrbach will share some of her favorite passages in the Conservative Movement’s Machzor Lev Shalem, for which she was a member of the Editorial Committee. Whether you’re a seasoned prayergoer or showing up with hesitation, this session will help you begin the High Holiday season with openness, intention, and agency.

Standing Together: Prayer, Presence, and the Power of Community

The High Holidays invite us into a season of profound reflection—not only on who we are as individuals, but on how we show up for one another and the world. This three-part webinar series explores the emotional and spiritual heart of this sacred time, focusing on the themes of vulnerability, responsibility, and connection. 

JTS High Holiday Webinars 2025

Jul 14, 2025

The High Holidays invite us into a season of profound reflection—not only on who we are as individuals, but on how we show up for one another and the world. This three-part webinar series explores the emotional and spiritual heart of this sacred time, focusing on the themes of vulnerability, responsibility, and connection.

Together, we’ll consider what it means to pray with presence, to engage meaningfully with others—even across difference—and to see these days not just as a personal journey, but as a call to collective transformation. Whether you are returning to familiar rituals or seeking a new way in, this series offers space to reflect, connect, and prepare with intention.

Alex Friedman – Senior Sermon (RS ’25)

Nov 13, 2024 By JTS Senior Sermon | Commentary | Senior Sermon | Vayera | Rosh Hashanah

Alex Friedman’s Senior Sermon on Vayera

Sacred Words in Liturgy and Life

Oct 11, 2024 By Shira Billet | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Human communication, the commitment to taking words seriously and to viewing the words we write and speak as serious commitments, has become even more imperiled in an age where our words are mediated through the technologies of social media, artificial intelligence, and the crippling social phenomena of political polarization and widespread mistrust.