How do you explain the High Holidays to kids without scaring the living daylights out of them? Just the images alone send me into black hibernation. No light, no consciousness. Let God add and erase names in the Book of Life without my awareness.

I do not conceive of God as a person and find the symbol of an autocrat to be problematic, rather than majestic. Yet the melody of the Avinu Malkeinu remains haunting, and the effect it has on me is powerful. That is, until I stop to think about the meaning of the words themselves.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated in 2012 from sundown on Sept. 16 to nightfall on Sept. 18. The Hebrew date for Rosh Hashanah is 1 Ti...

The Torah is lofty in vision and idealism, but also grounded here on earth. The Torah is not in heaven; it is here, in the messy imperfection.

For 10 days a year, I try to live my life as a prayer. I reflect on infinity, aware, as the psalmists, that life is a grain of sand and that I am powerless before the world.

Is it really such a healthy thing to feel oneself to be inadequate, judged and deficient? Does it make us better people, or does it make us more judgmental ourselves? And does God judge us, or only love?