Tarry a Day Longer
Oct 14, 2006 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Shemini Atzeret
For me as a child Sh’mini Atzeret was without question the least memorable among the Jewish holidays of the fall season. Sandwiched between the high drama of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the pageantry of Sukkot on one hand and the revelry of Simhat Torah on the other, Sh’mini Atzeret often seemed more like a way station than a destination. It had only two distinguishing characteristics. The first, the prayer for rain, seemed to me supremely irrelevant and even perverse; I wasn’t a farmer and I liked spending time outdoors, so what was the upside to rain? The second, Yizkor, was depressing; in any case in the synagogue of my youth those lucky enough to have parents who were alive and well repaired to the lobby to schmooze while the sad and serious business of Yizkor took place behind closed doors.
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Remembering Moses
Sep 27, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vezot Haberakhah | Shemini Atzeret | Simhat Torah
My father died twenty years ago. The day of his yahrzeit has never been hard for me to remember. It follows by one day the day affixed by the Talmud for the death of Moses (BT Kiddushin 38a). Moses died on the seventh of Adar, the last month of the Jewish calendar, and my father on the eighth. Thus the Hebrew date of my father’s passing is forever anchored in my memory by its proximity to the traditional date for the demise of Moses. Reciprocally, that convergence has heightened for me the yahrzeit of Moses, which is barely noted in most Jewish calendars.
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Repairing Jonah’s Sukkah
Oct 11, 2003 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Sukkot | Yom Kippur
This coming Friday evening we herald in the first festival of the Jewish year, Sukkot. Between Motzei Yom Kippur (the evening concluding Yom Kippur) and Friday, sukkot (temporary booths) are built all around the Jewish world. It is an especially memorable event in Israel where cities and villages alike are transformed by the festival greenery. Special markets spring up across the country peddling the four species that are brought together as we celebrate the absolute joy of the holiday. The fragrance of the etrog embraces all as we enter the sukkah, declaring our faith in God’s protection. That said, the sukkah is not only at the essence of Sukkot; the sukkah, in all its beauty and symbolism provides a powerful bridge between the most sacred day of the year, Yom Kippur, and the harvest festival of Sukkot.
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Seeds of Jewish Identity
Apr 10, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
The house is back to normal. The flock of children and grandchildren which descended upon us for the start of the new year left after Yom Kippur. It was not the entire Schorsch family this time, but enough to thrill us and exhaust us. Missing were the Berkeley contingent with their brood of three children, just returned from two years in Israel. The twins from Chicago are now 2 1/2 and talking up a storm, while our granddaughter from Brooklyn has just passed the one-year mark and charms everyone with a smile and a giggle. Visits have a way of turning cousins into friends.
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The Power of Prayer
Oct 3, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yom Kippur
The High Holy Days don’t play to our strength. The extended services put a premium on prayer, an activity at which we are no longer very adept. Yom Kippur asks of us to spend an entire day in the synagogue immersed in prayer. But we find it easier to believe in God than to pray to God. It is this common state of discomfort that prompts me to share with you a few thoughts on the art of Jewish praying.
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Dialogue with the Past
Oct 4, 2003 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Shabbat Shuvah
Among all the societies where Jews have lived, America has been least conducive to maintaining a sense of the past. A building from thirty years ago can be a historic landmark; kitchenware from forty years ago qualifies as antique. Objects from the past are allowed to have a fashionable revival but ideas, stories, and concepts from the past are considered outmoded.
Psychotherapy as a Lens for Conceptualizing Teshuvah
Sep 26, 2009 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Shabbat Shuvah | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
I have always thought it interesting that Maimonides places so much emphasis on words in the process called teshuvah, even for transgressions not against other human beings. After quoting the verse from the Torah that speaks about the importance of confession (vidui) as part of the process for repairing a wrong enacted in the world (Num. 5:5–6), Maimonides emphasizes that this must be done with words. Teshuvah cannot be limited to an internal process of reflection. Maimonides stresses that any internal commitments must ultimately get expressed with words and counsels that the more one engages in verbal confession and elaborates on this subject, the more praiseworthy one is (Laws of Teshuvah 1:1).
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A World Without Teshuvah
Sep 18, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
The Torah is largely a series of legal texts set in a narrative context. It is not replete with outbursts of poetry. Our poetic sensibility seeks satisfaction elsewhere in the Tanakh – in the passion of the prophets, or the poignancy of the psalmist, or the protest of Job, or in the sensuousness of the Song of Songs. The Torah touches only some of our senses. And yet, it closes in a great poetic flourish. As Moses nears his end, he switches from didactic prose to incandescent poetry.
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