Elul, Month of

She says that she is running on empty. She says that there is vast, useless space inside of her. She looks the same on the outside. But things are subtly falling apart. She is bored literally to tears even though her schedule is full. She can’t find meani...

It was hard to concentrate. Words were spinning in my head, like a wheel of anxiety.

“Your house is a sofer’s dream,” he said, referring to his job as a Torah scribe. Then he handed me a shopping bag containing 25 mezuzahs. Every year, during the month of Elul, which precedes Rosh Hashanah, it is customary to have a scribe inspect the par...

I was trying to fit in, be "cool," and at the time, my profoundly limited vision did not allow Judaism and "cool" to occupy the same sentence (unless the word "not" was involved). So, the novice soul searcher in me sought the teachings of sages and mystic...

I can’t forget Reb Meir Levitt, the oldest member of our minyan in the 1990s. He was a survivor of Auschwitz, his life spared not only because he worked as a tailor, but through many open miracles which he would recount in awe. As he aged, his memory reac...

I began going through the stages of grief. I couldn’t function for the first day. When day three arrived, I stopped missing my phone, and that’s when the really crazy stuff happened.

This childhood memory goes back nearly 30 years. Am I really old enough for that? I am around 10 years old. It is the middle of the night, and my father is shaking me awake. I am tired, I want to roll over and go back to sleep. It feels cold outside of my...

"Today is the day before Rosh Hashanah," his Zeide explained. "Today we do not blow Shofar. Tomorrow morning, we will blow the shofar in shul." The child did not comprehend the reasons. He kicked and screamed, telling his Zeide, "One more blast! One more ...

One day, the Kaiser of Austria came to visit the Czar of Russia...

How are we to reconcile the loftiness of Rosh Hashanah with the mundane subject of a significant part of its prayers? Chanah's prayer offers the response to this profound question.