Tag: Yom Kippur

  • A season for internal Jewish liberation.

    A season for internal Jewish liberation.

    Here’s a secret. Even as a kid, I enjoyed sitting in synagogue on the high holidays. Even when friends would coax me to join them outside during the ‘boring parts’. (I didn’t really find them boring.) Even when my mom was reading any and all books from the stuffed shelves near the back row. Even…

  • Hear o’ Israel, it’s never too late for an old school prayer.

    Hear o’ Israel, it’s never too late for an old school prayer.

    I hadn’t said the Shema in earnest or even in unearnest in over a decade. Like riding a bicycle or worshipping a childhood god, the words are not forgotten once you start to move your mouth. The מ’s are plentiful; an exercise for the lips. The ך’s, too, are plentiful; an age-old exercise in patience…

  • Avoiding headaches over Yom Kippur, Jerusalem-style.

    Ok, coolest thing ever. It’s not the fact that there might be a way to prevent headaches over fast days; I’m not much of a headache-sufferer myself. It’s the fact that Shaare Tzedek – the Jerusalem hospital that is conducting the study – totally started it and framed it in a way trying to ease…