糖心出品

From Self-Interest to Self-Surrender: Confronting the Challenges of Prayer

Aug 31, 2020 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Why do many modern Jews find聽tefillah聽so difficult? We鈥檒l grapple with this question by exploring attitudes toward prayer among thinkers including Rambam and Heschel, and we鈥檒l contrast assumptions about what makes for a genuine and meaningful prayer in Jewish tradition and in American culture.聽In particular, we鈥檒l聽discuss our expectations of what happens when we pray and the possibilities that emerge when we don鈥檛 put ourselves at the center of the prayer experience. Along the way, we will touch on Thomas Aquinas, Quakerism, Thomas Merton and yoga, and the light they shed on traditional Jewish conceptions of prayer.聽

Seeking and Offering Forgiveness: What are We Doing and How Do We Do It?

Aug 24, 2020 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Forgiveness is at the heart of the High Holy Days season, yet it is far from clear what we mean by this term. Employing insights from rabbinic sources,聽mussar聽literature and psychology, we will think out loud about what we hope to achieve and how to achieve it as we seek forgiveness for ourselves and are asked to forgive others.

God of the Faithful, God of the Faithless: Belief and Doubt in Prayer

Aug 17, 2020 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Do we need 鈥渇aith鈥� in order to pray? Can synagogue services be worthwhile and meaningful even if we鈥檙e not sure what we believe? We are hardly the first generation to struggle with contradictions among our intellectual beliefs, traditional Jewish liturgy, and the act of prayer. What do biblical and rabbinic texts about prayer, and the聽prayerbook聽itself, teach us about these conflicts, and how can they help us connect to prayer even in times of doubt or faithlessness?

Atonement: An Interplay Between the Individual and the Community

Sep 13, 2021 By Gordon Tucker | Video Lecture | Yom Kippur

A central feature of Yom Kippur is the act of atonement, or 鈥渁t-one-ment.鈥� But with whom should we seek to be “at one”? With God, with Israel, or with ourselves? In this session, we explored both the individual and collective aspects of this holy day, with special attention to Unetaneh Tokef, the Yom Kippur confession, and other liturgical features of the season.

5781 High Holiday Message

Sep 18, 2020 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Short Video | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

Chancellor Schwartz shares her thoughts on the 5781 High Holiday season.

Tip the Scales

Sep 18, 2020 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

鈥溾�攚ho will live and who will die . . . who will come to an untimely end . . . . who by plague . . . who will be brought low, and who will be raised up?鈥� (U-netaneh Tokef, from the High Holiday liturgy)

In my earliest memory of this prayer, I am a young girl standing between my mother and grandmother in synagogue amidst hundreds of others. Both women are sobbing uncontrollably, as they recited these words. I was puzzled by their outward display of anguish but knew enough not to interrupt them to ask what caused it. They grasped in a way I had yet to comprehend just how tenuous life is; they understood that this one prayer more than any other captures the fragility of human life that the Days of Awe magnify.

Faith, Forgiveness and Prayer: Finding Meaning in the Days of Awe

Aug 31, 2020 By Jan Uhrbach | Public Event video | Video Lecture | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

A series of online classes with JTS faculty and staff

The Value of Doubt

Oct 4, 2019 By Julia Andelman | Commentary | Shabbat Shuvah | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

The more one invests in trying to have a meaningful and genuine High Holiday prayer experience, the more one stands to lose if the words of the mahzor fall short of one鈥檚 aspirations. The mahzor is conceptually and theologically dense. If one takes the time to meditate upon the assertions of the prayers as they go by, one is sure to eventually encounter a text that rings false, problematic, or even alienating.