The shofar is the midwife of the new year. Into its piercing cry we squeeze all our heartfelt prayers, all our tears, our very souls.

Amongst all other holidays, Yom Kippur is acknowledged as the most holy and sublime. On a simple level, it appears that Yom Kippur is a day dedicated to repentance, but is this really the case? Think of it, first is …

Sukkot:

Inner Space

Everybody wants a home, if not a home, at least an apartment or personal room to call their own. Deeply we all quest a secure a place where we can just be ourselves; somewhere we can let …

Coming Home:

Tears of Transformation

Over the years, a custom has developed that on Rosh Hashanah, during the course of the day, we go out to a living body of water with lively fish swimming therein and symbolically cast away …

Lights seem to speak to us in a very deep way, particularly those gentle lights that dance atop of candles. There are few visuals that are as warming to us as the sight of a burning flame, a pure simple …

THE NAME PURIM:
To fully grasp the power, and unpack the spiritual significance of this holiday, we need to explore its name, Purim.

Pesach is not merely the celebration of a past event. It is an open gate to spiritual liberation that manifests every year, in every generation.

The objective of the Exodus is true freedom, which was reached with the giving of the Torah. Torah is the blueprint and very foundation of all creation. Integrating the Torah deeply into our lives connects us with the ultimate, unrestricted, uninterrupted flow of creation—its authentic freedom.

The point of it all is balance, the middle path, the balancing and counter-balancing of our emotional state. Lag B’Omer gives life and hope to the days that are otherwise meant to mourn.

The holiday of Shavuot is a celebration of the ‘Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai’— when infinite Divine intelligence was revealed within the finite world of time and space.

G-d’s gift of the Torah is an expression of the highest love imaginable. Within the Torah, G-d revealed Himself and His innermost desires and showed us the way to love and come ever closer. Where fear once predominated, there became a universe permeated by love, inspired by the most positive, life affirming partner/power, G-d Himself.

The means to our survival has always been a relentless cleaving to our center, and to the Divine Center-point of all reality. When the dreidel is spinning intensely around its center, the four sides blur and appear circular; the multiple surfaces of the cube become as the single surface of a cylinder, as they cleave, so-to-speak, to the oneness of their center.

Chanukah is traditionally referred to as the festival of lights. Speaking of the laws of this holiday, the codifiers of Jewish law strongly suggest that we increase the giving of charity during these special days. Giving charity is always a …

What is their story?  What are they telling us? Most clearly they are telling us is to simply quiet down. Often we become so entangled in the noise and onrush of day-to-day life that we fail to truly notice that …

Yaale Tachenuneinu — Reflective Light

The usual acrostic pattern of the Piyutim (the special songs of the High Holidays) follows the Aleph Beit, beginning with the first letter aleph and following the established order. But here we find the order …

Yom Kippur night is a unique time for men in that a prayer shawl (talit) is worn during the night service. Although we should make sure to put the talit on before sunset since we are commanded to …

This powerful prayer is said to have been first published in the 11th century by Rabbi Kolonymus of Meinz, although it was not composed by him but by a Rabbi Amnon.

The story is that Rabbi Amnon was a wealthy …

Lamnatzeiach

In this powerful chapter of Psalms, the name of God, Elokim, appears seven times. Elokim is the screen that shields the receiver from the infinite overwhelming light of God, expressed in the essential four-letter name, the Tetragrammaton, which …

The dramatic story of Chana captures the essential nature of prayer on Rosh Hashanah. In fact, according to some opinions, it was on Rosh Hashanah that Chana first prayed for a child.

As the story begins, we learn that Chana …

LINES, CIRCLES AND INFINITY: Meditations on the Seder Plate.
On Passover night we are given the power to tap into a space beyond the perpetual pendulum of cause and effect.

Kedusha, holiness–and every truly positive phenomenon in the world–is eternal. A Yom Tov- a religious holiday is not merely a remembrance of a past miracle or positive event. It is a celebration of the reshimu, the eternal imprint of the …

The number four resonates throughout the Seder. As we will review, the four cups of wine reveal our redemption from the four types of exile, the four questions inform us of the specific mitzvoth of the Seder, and the discussion among the four sons in the haggadah illustrates the archetypes of the four levels of consciousness and redemption.

When we recite the Hagadah, we should take it personally–it should liberate us. Therefore, all of the characters depicted in it should be seen as reflections or representations of different parts of ourselves. We need all three elements, Moshe, Aharon, and Miriam, in order to bring about a redemption from our ‘stuckness’.

Olam — the Hebrew term for world, universe, creation — is rooted in the word helem (concealment). The way this material-based universe operates, the way it was set up and created is that creation does not unambiguously point to a …

When the Outer reflects the Inner

Over the years, a custom has developed that on Rosh Hashanah, during the course of the day, we go out to a living body of water with lively fish swimming therein and symbolically cast away our unwanted negative baggage. We …

A closer look at the special nature of the prayers of Rosh Hashanah.

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Every time we promise and say we will or will not do this or that, we create a form of reality through our words. Therefore when our actions do not match that reality, an emptiness results. Vows uttered but not fulfilled are empty, lacking vessels of fulfillment. And in order to repair this lack—in order to build the necessary vessels— we need to remedy how we speak. We begin by becoming conscious of our words.