rosh hashanah

The Blessing of So Many Days of Celebration

September 29, 2020 by • Tags: , , , •

From Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah we have the blessing of so many days of celebration – a blessing that can feel never ending some days! We have days of great joy and anticipation – eating favourite foods, dancing, shaking the lulav – and we gather for more somber days, where, for example, on Yizkor we remember our loved ones with pain in our hearts to this day.

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Holding Ourselves Upright

September 22, 2020 by • Tags: , •

Dear friends,

One can learn from the smallest of details. As I was preparing this message, I attempted to diminish the photo of myself (above). If I diminished the photo too much, it flipped and showed upside down. What occurred to me in that moment was a lesson in being careful to not diminish ourselves too much. That even in this season where we are so conscious of our past failings, we need to hold ourselves upright with the dignity of good intentions, our sense of integrity and the balance that comes from standing with and beside each other. If we don’t hold ourselves upright in the fullness of our being the world may suddenly appear upside down.More

Zooming the High Holy Days

September 14, 2020 by • Tags: , , , , •

Hello dear Kolot Mayim friends,

We will be Zooming all Rosh Hashanah services – please join us to see all the wonderful faces of our Kolot Mayim membership. The really wonderful part of Zoom is we see each other face-on, and not just the back of many heads.

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Preparing for the High Holy Days

September 8, 2020 by • Tags: , , , , •

Hello dear Kolot Mayim friends,

The days are getting shorter, the time to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is getting shorter. Rosh Hashanah is approaching so very quickly. I am rehearsing and planning, charting and listening and trying to make our services feel haimisch even as they will feel very different this year.

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Elul

September 1, 2019 by • Tags: , •

Very briefly, as you will be hearing from me over Shabbat and next Sunday. I want to invite you into an Elul journey.

Elul is understood to be a month of preparation for the next new moon – Rosh Hashanah. We traditionally take time to forgive ourselves for deeds we haven’t been willing to face into. We try to forgive others if they have hurt us, even if we have been unwilling to let go of that grain of hurt/sand, (even though usually we end up with a sore heart and not a pearl).

This Elul, while we do this work, I am offering another challenge. Today is 1 Elul. We count forward to 29 Elul. Let’s make an Elul jar, where we do some reckoning of ourselves as Jews. Each day write down a question you have, a fear or a failing you may feel, or write about a small gift you would like to bring us. Think about who you are in this lifetime, and ask yourself how you could bring more of who you are into these coming days. On Rosh Hashanah we will bring our scraps of paper and our scraps of selves to services. We will make a pile, mix them up, and then read through and discuss some of our thoughts.

“Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?”

Chodesh tov, Shavua tov,
Rabbi Lynn