David Gold Shana Tova I think the reason the Rabbi thought of me as someone to invite to say something about Ḥoni and the carob tree guy and the Longpath is that I spend most of my time working for an organization, which I helped found, that has the pretty Longpath-type goal of ending the Electoral College and creating proportional representation in Congress. https://youtu.be/n_diL6yaWCI And if that sounds like easily a seven-decade carob tree right…

Hilan Warshaw “The directory is being rebuilt.”There I was this past week, sitting in my home office, preparing the remarks that I am delivering to you now. Like we all do much of the time, I was multitasking. While I was writing, I was also trading WhatsApp messages in Hebrew with my aunt and uncle in Tel Aviv; they were sequestered in a bomb shelter, where my cousin’s daughter was celebrating her 15th birthday, missiles…

Emily SHapiro Rosh HaShanah seems like a perfect time to be thinking about time. It’s a new beginning and yet, also, a repetition. Rosh HaShanah comes round again and again and again, always followed by Yom Kippur ten days later, Sukkot, SimchatTorah…and we launch into the rest of the year. This year, following last Simchat Torah, which was October 7, has felt qualitatively different from other years. My own sense of who I am in…

Michael Davidson Much of what I am going to say was captured long ago by a sage of the Ewe people of Ghana. When night or day approach, do we know what is going to happen to us on either occasion? But whether we are in a stream or whether it is night, we are everywhere still in the world.  This is why we say that God is the world. Everything in the world is…

Donna Katzin Seventeen years ago today – 9-11-2001 – I wake up at 6:30 a.m. in Tucson to participate in a socially responsible investment conference.  As I get dressed, I turn on the TV, and see the image of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. A terrible movie to start the day, I say to myself…and then, soon after, another. I am jolted into horror.  It is true. And I cannot imagine the…

Liz Emens A friend I admire once told me that, when she goes through her days, she can hear a whisper that says “kadosh, kadosh, kadosh”—holy, holy, holy—in the everyday sounds around her. On a good day, I can hear this whisper too: in the slushing of tires through puddles in these city streets; in my children’s laughter; even in tiny sounds of my own breath when it’s quiet. I hear it more this time…

Written and presented by Lester Shane There is a moment in the theatre that always thrills me. The house lights go down. It is completely dark and absolutely silent. It is a moment of infinite possibility. Then the curtain goes up and standing in the light are actors. In the light they begin to reveal the truth of the text. I think God lives there. The play continues in dialogue with the audience. I think…

Rabbi Steve Gutow I was honored when Lauren asked me to give one of the three talks today—talks I have enjoyed greatly over the years given by others on Day 2. Part of the enjoyment was the fact that many of the speakers had not spoken much. When Lauren asked me to talk, she knew I had spoken in this shul as a rabbi. She said, “Steve, you are giving this not so much as…