Tishrei Essays

If life is a space odyssey then the High Holidays are home base. That's where you came from, where you're directed from and where you return for full-service maintenance. Here's a guide to doing it on Planet Earth.

During services today, my three-year-old daughter ran into the shul, parading in my wife’s high-heeled shoes. She is presenting graphically what we are all trying to do emotionally and spiritually. She is working on elevating herself just a few inches.

Couldn't the Master Planner of these holidays space it out a bit more, giving us a bit of time to breathe and recuperate before the next one? Looks like time management is not high on the list of priorities there...

Do you work in order to holiday, or do you holiday in order to work?

The festivals of the High Holiday season pluck every string of our being, from introspection to commitment to solemnity to joy. The key to these diverse experiences is the opening line of Psalm 27: “G‑d is my light.”

The countdown is over, a button is pressed, and -- hopefully -- away it goes, to where silicon has never gone before. On October 20th, we'll all be on the launch pad

As in a marriage, when the wedding-party is over, the couple's true intimate life begins. Shemini Atzeret is described as the "time of intimacy with the Divine." At this time, we ask for rain - the symbol of intimacy between heaven and earth.

"The way one begins the new year during the [Jewish] month of Tishrei, makes it easier to follow in this spirit throughout the year..."

The first half of Tishrei is marked by solemnity, the second by elation; but the Chassidic masters explain that these are simply the "hidden" and "revealed" dimensions of the same elements