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Virtual Rosh Hashanah Box

Box filled with apples and honey labelled "virtual rosh hashanah box"

Your Virtual Rosh Hashanah Box holds hand-picked resources for a sweet new year. For more High Holiday resources, visit our High Holidays Collection for 2021/5782.


Read: My Prayer for the New Year

What do we need to pray for at the start of the New Year? Rabbi Debra Smith’s prayer offers may suggestions that could be our own. Sourced from Ritualwell

hand holding a sparkler


Read: At the Hand of Terror: A 9/11 Memorial Prayer

On this 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, we join Alden Solovy in praying for our country, for those who died on that infamous day, and for an end to violence and terror in our world. Sourced from Ritualwell

9-11 memorial lights in nyc


Listen: Achat Sha’alti’

With Psalm 27 the anchor text for the High Holiday season, David Lefkowich presents his version of the signature line from it, which is traditionally recited daily from Rosh Hodesh Elul through Sh’mini Atzeret. Sourced from ReconstructingJudaism.org


Read: Shanah Tovah, Dear Couch

Having spent so much time in our homes over the last year, Rabbi Jenn Gubitz’s “Meditation on Our Homes as Holy Space” seems a fitting way to reflect on the past and pray for the future. Sourced from Ritualwell

woman on sofa looking out window


Listen: Chana’s Song

This nigun by Sam Tygiel, arranged and sung by Rebekka Goldsmith, is inspired by the haftarah for the first day of Rosh Hashanah: the story of Chana and the birth of her son, Shmuel (Samuel). “I imagine Chana with Shmuel in her arms singing the secrets she has discovered through her practice of prayer, through her suffering. She is singing him the secrets of the universe, the secrets of God.” Sourced from ReconstructingJudaism.org


Read: Traditional Rosh Hashanah Seder With Adaptations

Rabbi Barbara Penzner and Brian Rosman introduce the traditional Rosh Hashanah ritual foods and their blessings, along with a few reconstructed twists. Sourced from Ritualwell

traditional Rosh Hashanah seder


Read: The Akeida’: Questions of Sacrifice

In this d’var Torah, Sydney Nestel ponders whether “the story of the Akeida [is] the model of all subsequent religious inspired fanaticism? Or is it a model for the formation and survival of any human community that wishes to transmit its values from one generation to the next?” Sourced from ReconstructingJudaism.org

the akeida

 


Rosh Hashanah Resources 2020/5781

Read: Rosh Hashanah Greeting

Welcome the New Year with this poem by Barbara Kavadias. Sourced from Ritualwell

 

Read: Practice Instructions for Spiritual Accounting

The practice of spiritual accounting called heshbon hanefesh is one of the most important steps of the process of teshuvah, or returning to our best possible selves. Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein describes a way to begin. Sourced from Ritualwell


 

Listen: ‘I Stand Here (Hineni)’: A Song for the Service Leader

Beth Hamon wrote this several years ago during her first professional assignment as a cantorial soloist, primarily to calm down her jittery nerves about the whole experience. Sourced from Ritualwell


 

Read: Voice, Water, Place: New/Old Ways of Understanding God

In this essay, Rabbi Toba Spitzer teaches that we are heir to a rich assortment of metaphors for God that may resonate more powerfully than the High Holiday images of king and judge. Sourced from Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations


 

Listen: Shofarot: A Tripartite Proposal

Hear the sounds of the shofar as played by Daniel Stein Kokin. Sourced from Ritualwell


 

Watch: Cultivating Resilience: Opening Ourselves to the Full Magnitude of the ‘Days of Awe’

Rabbi Deborah Waxman makes the case that immersive encounters with the breadth and depth of Jewish wisdom and living can help us cultivate resilience not only in this High Holiday season, but all the time. Sourced from ReconstructingJudaism.org

Cultivating Resilience: Opening Ourselves to the Full Magnitude of the Days of Awe

 

Watch: Apples and Honey for a Sweet New Year: Metaphors and How They Help Us Create Meaning

In liturgy, action and our spiritual imagination, metaphors help us to create meaning and connection. Rabbi Marjorie Berman looks at some of the metaphors of the Yamim Noraim, the “Days of Awe,” and explores how metaphor underlies our tradition, our religious experience and our perception of reality. Sourced from Recon Connect Beit Midrash

Apples and Honey for a Sweet New Year

 


These resources were drawn from: