Category: Rosh Hashanah
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5782: “Not a Shehechiyanu Moment”
My first big event since the arrival of Covid was a vaccination party at Rush Hospital. On January 27th Sara and I drove to Rush Hospital where we were ushered into a large conference room along…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5782: “Inward and Outward”
Did you ever wonder what it must be like to live in one of the buildings next to the shul? I know it’s no fun when the security alarm goes off at 3 AM and wakes…
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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…
