Rosh Hashanah 2011

These 10 days are always very special to me and remind me why I so appreciate my religion. Most significantly, it is a time to chart a more righteous path for the coming year.

We love to tell young people how we think they should express their Jewishness, but rarely do we stop long enough to really, truly learn what drives and inspires them.

The day now called Rosh Hashanah has come to lead to the holiday of Yom Kippur, which is observed as a time of self-examination and repentance. But that wasn't its original purpose.

Of all the rituals and customs of the High Holidays, blowing the shofar stands out as the most potent of all symbols. It is reminiscent of the formation of man: "and God blew into his nostrils the soul of life" (Genesis 2:7).

A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. During Elul, the month of preparation before the Jewish High Holi...

Awe of creation and the Creator permeates one of the central biblical texts of Rosh Hashanah: the binding of Isaac. In a Jewish-environmental context, one rabbinic interpretation might be called an "eco-conscious" reading.

Dear God, help us learn the sounds of the shofar. The sound of our history. The sound of our sorrows. Let it draw us closer to You with each blast, with each unspoken prayer.

The mere fact that bee honey is kosher is itself odd. After all, it is a product of the non-kosher bee. How can a product of a non-kosher animal be kosher?

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated in 2011 from sundown on Sept. 28 to nightfall on Sept. 30. The Hebrew date for Rosh Hashanah is 1 Ti...

With one simple command -- Tekiah! -- came the shofar heard 'round the world. On Sunday (Sept. 18), horn-blowing participants in 17 cities pulled ...

Light does not erase difficulty or doubt or even death. But it allows us to seek blessing: Blessed be God, who grants us memory, and gives us light.

Last Rosh Hashanah, I challenged myself to minimize the use of plastic ware and other food related disposables. Did I become no-impact woman? No. However, I made a huge paradigm shift.