Finding meaning—and spiritual growth—during the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
As I finish my training to become a cantor, looking back on the High Holiday services that brought me to this point
A list of books to augment your time in synagogue (but don’t read them during the rabbi’s sermon, it’s rude)
On Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the 1960s, my parents didn’t belong to a synagogue, but they found an ad hoc congregation in an unlikely place for the High Holidays
How a rabbi made history on Mount Sinai
Searching for God, or at least a picnic, on Rosh Hashanah
What a children’s book can teach us about prayer and renewal
Remembering last Rosh Hashanah, in the thick of the pandemic
Bar the unvaccinated from my synagogue? As a rabbi, I have no choice.
Any congregation that takes any measure that bars any Jew from praying in communion on the Days of Awe is divesting itself from the very core of Jewish life
You can tell your story—even if it doesn’t have a happy ending
How an economics professor and an 18th-century rabbi helped me make better choices
Summer camp, Sarah McLachlan, and the sound of the shofar
What I learned leading High Holiday services at Rikers Island
A little-known parable from 1930 gives us a new way of hearing the shofar
After I left the Orthodox world—and my marriage—I found a new place to observe the Jewish New Year: on a different kind of path
It’s not easy for a parent to let a child go. A lesson I learned at Yom Kippur services made it just a bit easier.
In the Bay Area, Karaite Jews struggle to build a future in America