Category: Rosh Hashanah
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Rosh Hashanah 5781: “The Lonely Man of Faith in a Pandemic”
Google Calendar has been trolling me for the past six months. Not a week has gone by in which Google Calendar – ostensibly trying to be helpful – has not reminded me of some upcoming event…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5780: “Beyond the Straw Hat Shul”
One Shabbat morning in the summer of 1870, Duber Ginsberg, an immigrant from Mariampol Lithuania walked into his erstwhile shul while wearing a straw hat whereupon he was promptly thrown out for his impudence and irreverence.…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5779: “Yesterday’s Paper Telling Yesterday’s News”
Almost ten years ago as we prepared to host our first Pesach sedarim in Princeton, a car pulled up in front of our home and stopped with a screech in a cloud of dust. Moments later…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5779: “Speaking Poetry to Power”
In 1937, at the height of Stalin’s terror, the great Russian author Boris Pasternak was invited to attend a conference of Soviet writers. He knew that if he attended and participated in the conference, he would…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5778: “The World Was Created for Me”
Some of you may know that our brothers and sisters in Israel are suffering through an acute crisis right now. It is a crisis that could have been predicted—indeed it was predicted many years ago—and yet…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5778: “Why Good People Disagree”
The opposite of a truth is a lie. But the opposite of a profound truth, is sometimes another profound truth. This quote, attributed to the physicist Neils Bohr, is illustrated by the Torah readings on the…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5777: “90 Seconds”
Shannah Tovah. This year, I anticipate that our services will end 90 seconds later than last year. I know how sensitive everyone is to the end of services so I wanted to give you all a…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5777: “Smile for the Camera”
During my final year in yeshiva, a film crew came to the beit midrash to record our prayers and studies. The film crew was filming footage for a PBS mini-series that chronicled several young Americans as…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5776: “The Shul and the City”
I. Jews cannot agree about anything. Looking around today, at our shul, at other congregations in this city, and at synagogues of every denomination and every variety in every corner of the world, you might think that there…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5776: “What are We Here For?”
I. Many of my friends and colleagues are wondering about one question on Rosh Hashanah 5776: Is it possible to speak about a politically controversial topic in a way that unifies a community? I know of one…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 