#High holidays

[jellybeanium124]

Hello gentiles I come bearing another announcment!

Do not wish Jews a "happy Yom Kippur." Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year and the Day of Atonement. It's a day where we fast (if we choose to and are able), and ask for forgiveness from God and those around us for our wrongdoings of the past year. Saying "happy Yom Kippur" is inappropriate due to the nature of the holiday. If you know someone fasting, wishing them an easy fast is appropriate and traditional.

[honeysuckle-venom]

The Shofar Breaks Your Heart

by Dane Kuttler

When you give a girl a shofar –  no, not a proper instrument of G-d, but a rough-cut horn with no real mouthpiece her aunt brings back from a trip to Jerusalem, don’t make it easy.

Put it up on the shelf in the living room where its curled promise of a shout will tempt her until she can reach it on tiptoe.

Tell her no one has ever found its voice, that she will only make it grunt, bray and sputter like the animal it came from.

Then give her a few years.

Give her an empty garage and a neighborhood Jewish enough to understand what it’s hearing so she can practice until tiny tekiot burst forth from the scrap of ram.

She will be the only one who can ever shape its sounds, can bend the call to tekiah, round off nine drops of t’ruah wailing, fling the anguished cry of a sh’varim from its mouth.

Let her brag about this.  Remember that children are not humble creatures, that the simple act of being heard is their great triumph.  Let her be heard.

Bring her to Hebrew school. Teach her the story of the rabbi who told his students that he would put the words of Torah on their hearts; that the words would only find their way in when the students’ hearts broke. Let her sit with that tale for as long as it takes for her own heart to shatter, for torah and poetry and forgiveness  find their way inside,

play her Leonard Cohen. Let him croon about the cracks in everything, that’s how the light gets in, let her begin searching for light, ask her where she thinks the cracks come from, give her Auschwitz, give her Torquemada, give her pogrom and quota and blacklist, the ashes of all her burnt bridges, give her avinu malkenu, ashamnu, ashamnu, ashamnu, 

watch her break  her heart with her fist.

Give her the shofar.   Let the horn steal her breath, let her begin to understand that she’s not holding a dead piece of animal, but a living prayer.

Teach her: after every blast you can hear the echo of the still small voice.

If you listen for it, you can hear the calls for the wild cries they are; salute them with a straight back when they yank you from your amidah; and should you hear a shofar blower struggle and gasp and strain for each call, imagine yourself a trapped animal, desperate to be heard.

When it’s over, Close your eyes.

Be. Broken. Here.  Before G-d and your people. Be. Cracked.

feel the light and the words come in.

[ceaseless-exhauster]

I love Simchat Torah so much. We prayed for the Oct 7 victims in our circle; being in the middle while that happened since I had been taking these pictures beforehand was really powerful.

Our Torah is over 300 years old and survived in Poland through the Shoah, it was found in a town that had no Jews left. The man who brought it from where it landed in Cincinnati to our temple wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it overnight in a hotel so he stayed awake and hugged it instead.

I’m so glad we have it and get to love it and let it shine for the world. Chag Sameach, and don’t forget to carry the joy of Torah into the year ahead.

[zebratoys]

גְּמַר חֲתִימָה טוֹבָה אָמֵן שַׁבָּת שָׁלוֹם עֲדַת יִשְׂרָאֵל Gmar Chatima Tovah A good sealing May we will be sealed in The Book of Life for a good and blessed year 🤍✨בְּסִיַּעְתָּא דִּשְׁמַיָּא

[thejewitches]

Jewish Holidays coming up but poorly described:

Apple & honey industry celebration day

Be like an angel day (no food allowed)

Shake a lemon with cellulite at G-d in a hut

Holiday we celebrate because we said so

We finish the holy-book-holiday

[fish-in-need-of-a-bicycle]

Rating things goyim have said to me about High Holidays

“Happy Rosh HaShanah!” 10/10, Thank you, I will have a happy Rosh HaShanah!

“Happy New Year!” 11/10, You even know what the holiday is about!

“Happy Yom Kippur” 8/10, Not the right tone but I appreciate the awareness of what day it is.

“Oh yeah, it’s Ramadan, right?” 5/10, wrong religion and season, but right starting letter in English I guess.

In response to me saying L’Shana Tova to an entirely different person, “I don’t speak Hebrew” 2/10, Like, okay, thanks for sharing?

[maimonidesnutz]

my friend made this back in 2020 but it still works today

[alienprophecy]

I love that my birthday is always around the high holy days. No matter how I’m feeling about getting older I can view it through a lens of growth and change, and I’m really grateful for that

[mental-mona]

No people has believed as lucidly and long as have Jews that life has a purpose; that this world is an arena for justice and human dignity; that we are, each of us, free and responsible, capable of shaping our lives in accordance with the highest ideals. We are here for a reason. We were created in love and forgiveness by the God of love and forgiveness who asks us to love and forgive. However many times we may have failed to live up to our aspirations, God always gives us the chance and the power to begin again. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the holiest days of a holy people, God summons us to greatness.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l, Ceremony & Celebration p.3

[amyisraelchaiforever]

I was driving home from school (I only go to synagogue on the first day of rosh hashanah, not the second) and I see an chabadnik (i say in an affectionate tone) family, looking so happy but also worried.

Rolled down my windows and yelled, "Shana tova!"

The couple smiled at me and the kids laughed in delight. "Shana tova!" they yelled back.

I kept driving and they kept walking, but they looked so happy.

It's the small moments

Am yisrael chai 💙

[babka-enjoyer]

Autistic converts are braver than any marine because rawdogging a highly ritualized and scripted cultural event like the High Holy Days is so terrifying that Ari Aster himself could not dream it up

[pomegranateandhoney]

שנה טובה

✨🍎🍏🍯✨

אם אשכחך ירושלים תשכח ימינ

“We are all Zionists. In our services, in our prayers, three times a day we mention the name of Zion and we hope for the rebuilding of Zion.”

–Rav Meir Franco, the only Sephardic Rabbi to survive the 1929 Hevron pogrom

צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ׃

[tzipporahs-well]

New Year: “Yay happy new year!” :D

Jewish New Year: *screams*

[ceaseless-exhauster]

🚨 Important question!!! 🚨

We’re holding the “great Jewish bake-off” at my temple next week, it’s an annual tradition for us in the time leading up to the High Holy Days - my Rabbi has just asked me if I can help secure some fun prizes for it. They also asked if I could come up with some fun/silly names for the different prize levels, since a lot of kiddos participate!

My important question is this: does anyone know of some good Hebrew or Yiddish pun-type names I could assign for prize tiers? I’m thinking there’ll be 1st/2nd/3rd place, and then I’d like to have cute “honorable mentions” for all the other participants

Thanks in advance lovely ppl of Jumblr

[yenteleh]

I think I just had the worst Yom Kippur ever.

To start, for the last two weeks I was meaning to set up a meeting with a rabbi to discuss fasting-related questions, but so much was happening that I ✨forgot✨.

I woke up at 5am to catch an early train and get to the office in City to be able to make it to Kol Nidre after. Mind you, at this point I’m feeling not that great, my throat hurts etc, but I’ve stupidly decided to grit my teeth through it.

The service was supposed to start at 17:45, which is a perfect amount of time for me to 1) drop my stuff off at a friend’s place so I don’t have to carry on Shabbat/YK and 2) have a seudat mafseket.

At 16:30, I text someone I know from shul about whether she’s coming. She says yes, but we’re going to an orthodox shul because our cantor is sick and can’t sing.

Huh?

Nobody told me. I call up the leader of the shul and he’s like oooops, we forgot to inform you. Oh, and the service starts at 17:15, and you have to be there on time so we can go in together because the security doesn’t know you. Oh, and don’t bring any luggage, maybe you can leave it at the office?

At that point I’m pissed, I haven’t eaten anything that comes even close to a proper lunch and I’m seveeely underdressed. The only consolation was that my office is a 10 minute walk from that shul, so at least I wasn’t late on top of everything.

I felt angry and embarrassed because here I am, showing up in a pretty casual outfit loaded with luggage on this one day where you’re supposed to look nice and NOT show up with a backpack, in this one place where I would’ve preferred to dress tznius. All of that could’ve been avoided by a single text message. Of course they sent out a newsletter at 6am today, but guess what, I don’t check my email on yom tov.

Debated between returning to ortho shul for YK day services or try a Reform one, but then I woke up feeling worse than the day before and just decided to stay home to not make myself sicker.

[askjumblr]

i'm going to be attending high holiday services for the first time this year (!!!!) but i tend to need a break when there's a lot of people around me. When would be appropriate/inappropriate times to step away for a minute? (I'm a conversion student and i attend a very liberal conservative synagogue)

.