Category: Yom Kippur

We live in a scary and unpredictable world. We never really know what tomorrow, or today, will bring.

One unremarkable morning during graduate school, my friend and I rode the Long Island Railroad from my parents’ house in Great Neck, NY into Manhattan. As it was a few days before Rosh Hashana, I used the 25-minute ride to recite selichot. When we arrived at Penn Station, my friend asked if she could borrow my selichot book and return it to me that night in Washington Heights. I happily agreed.

By the time we met up 10 hours later, the entire world had changed. It was almost impossible to comprehend what had transpired in those few hours between our passing of the selichot book back and forth.

The date was Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

I remember walking through the streets of Manhattan that clear, sunny morning, without a cloud in the sky and thinking about how calm everything was. And then less than a half-hour later, the first plane hit. And then the second. Within a few hours, thousands of innocent lives had been taken, and countless more were altered forever. And the world was a different place.

Read the full article on The Times of Israel

Virtually all Jewish holidays revolve around an historical event. And our mandate on each holiday is not merely to remember that such an event once occurred, but to reenact that event and relive it annually ourselves. For example, at the Pesach seder, we eat bitter herbs and matzah, recline, drink four cups of wine, and more, all toward the goal of ultimately feeling as though we ourselves are marching triumphantly out of Egypt. On Sukkot, we literally move our tables, and often even our beds, into our own portable tabernacles to feel our closeness with and dependence upon God. Yom Kippur is anomalous in that it seems to lack any historical context. There is no reenactment, no fun foods to eat, or dramatizations to keep the kids (and the grownups!) awake and engaged. It is too austere and solemn a day for that, a no-frills day to spend hunched over in prayer, beating our chests for our wayward behaviors.

But maybe not.

Read the full article on the Times of Israel