Ne‘ilah: Final Closing, or Not Quite?

Sep 11, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary | Yom Kippur

“P’tach lanu sha’ar” (Keep open the gate for us) are the words of a fragment of a piyyut attributed to Elazar Kallir (6th century, Land of Israel) [see the Rabbinical Assembly’s Mahzor Lev Shalem, 414]. 

Taking What Isn’t Ours

Sep 11, 2013 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Yom Kippur

It’s not literally a skeleton in my closet, but I was still upset to find it hanging there.

How to Love Yom Kippur

Sep 12, 2012 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Yom Kippur

The importance of “permission to pray with those who have transgressed,” recited immediately before chanting Kol Nidrei, is underlined in some congregations by the practice of repeating the words three times for added emphasis. The declaration clearly has enormous rhetorical power. But what does it mean? How can these words, this claim, help propel us forward into Kol Nidrei and beyond?

The Fiction of Teshuvah

Nov 20, 2012

Does anyone ever really change their ways? Can we become “someone new”? Is teshuvah really possible, or is it just fiction? Best-selling authors Susan Isaacs and Linda Fairstein as they discuss this topic through the characters in their books.

Topics in Talmud: The High Holidays

Oct 25, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Text Study | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur

Jan 1, 1980

¹⁴ [The Lord] says:
Build up, build up a highway!
Clear the road!
Remove all obstacles
From the road of My people!

Yom Kippur

Jan 1, 1980

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the Lord.

A Nation of Priests

Sep 25, 2004 By JTS Alumni | Commentary | Yom Kippur

By Mallory Probert (DS ’05)

This is the way of summer. The earth spins more slowly. Food tastes better. Friends are more engaging. We rediscover the joy of taking afternoon naps during the middle of the week. But then September comes, and it’s dearth of community activities. Perhaps this is the hidden wisdom behind the timing of the Days of Awe – for they occur precisely at the same time as our secular lives resume their frantic pace.