High Holy Day Essentials

This year’s High Holy Days couldn’t be more relevant. The forty days — including the 30 days that lead up to the ten day High Holy Day period — are all about encountering our physical fragility, our emotional vulnerability, and our capacity for resilience.

Although it’s uncertain how this Fall’s observances will take shape at KI, what we do know for sure is that we want to create a way for personal reflection and communal connection to encourage and strengthen all our members during the month of Elul—the period of preparation for our most sacred time.

We encourage you to reflect on how things have shifted for you during these demanding times. How do you now distinguish what is in your hands to accomplish from what is beyond yourself? How do you relate differently to the Divine and feel a sacred presence at work in your life? How do you keep going despite the weight of daily struggle and lack of visibility for the future?

We invite individuals of all ages to share these reflections in written form highlighting personal stories/narratives that convey your orientation to this year’s High Holiday period in response to one of the following prompts:

• Tshuva is an invitation to self-renewal. Can you share an example from recent months of personal rediscovery?
• Through Tefillah, we refresh our relationship with God.  How have recent events shifted your rapport with that which is beyond your control?
• Tzedakah activates our outreach to each other.  What’s an example of how these demanding times have altered your approach to generosity?

Adults and young adults: please submit your response (no more than 250 words in any genre that speaks to you) here by July 22. Children are invited to respond with a drawing, poem, or story. We hope to receive enough responses to l compile a Book of Sacred Sharing for the forty day period, beginning at the start of Elul in the third week of August.

Sincerely,

Rabbi William Hamilton
Rabbi Elizabeth Bonney-Cohen