
High Holy Days Resources


Join Our Community-Wide Writing Project
This Elul, we invite you to join our community-wide writing project and share your reflections. We ask you to respond to the simple, yet profound, ...

What is Yom Kippur?
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the culmination of a 40-day-long process of teshuvah—shedding the dysfunctional patterns in our lives, making amends for our ...

Opening the Gates: Observing Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur is the pinnacle of our introspective season. Throughout Yom Kippur, you will encounter prayer services that have some familiar elements and others that ...

Digging Deeper: A Spiritual Accounting
Kol Nidre, the prayer that begins our Yom Kippur experience, is most well known for its iconic and haunting melody. The Book of Life is ...

Foundation: What is Rosh Hashanah?
Rosh Hashanah not only marks the start of the Jewish year but also begins the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, a 10-day period that ...

Opening the Gates: Observing Rosh Hashanah
On Rosh Hashanah, we use special greetings, we eat sweet foods, and we perform the ritual of tashlikh—symbolically casting away our sins.

Digging Deeper: Opening Our Hearts
Throughout the month of Elul, in the lead-up to the Yamim Nora’im, we engage in heshbon nefesh, reflecting on who we are and who we ...

Foundation: What is Elul?
During Elul, the Hebrew month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we feel the spiritual ...

Opening the Gates: What is Heshbon Nefesh?
Heshbon Nefesh, literally “Accounting of the Soul,” is a process of introspection. It is a deep examination and a personal inventory of our behavior, motivations, ...

Digging Deeper: What is Teshuvah?
Often translated as “repentance,” teshuvah literally means “to return”: returning to the version of ourselves that is most true and holy, no matter how far ...

Digging Deeper: What is Psalm 27?
We recite Psalm 27 twice daily from the second day of Rosh Hodesh Elul through Shemini Atzeret. The psalm depicts a person of pure unwavering ...