Seventeen years ago today – 9-11-2001 – I wake up at 6:30 a.m. in Tuscon 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 hate that…

Myra Zuckerbraun, 2018 We greet each other with wishes for a sweet year and hope for health and continuing in the book of life- perhaps masking the anxiety of the real work of our days of awe. The shofar sound is the opposite of sweetness.  It is piercing, dramatic and awesome. I hear an edge of danger and risk. Without thinking much about it, I have always loved the piercing sound, the drama and the…

Rachel Starr To be honest, I'm not great at listening to wake-up calls. When my alarm goes off in the morning, my hand instinctively reaches for the snooze button. Sometimes--usually--more than once. The shofar is a more visceral wake-up call--one that reverberates through our bodies and pierces through the silence. That doesn't mean I've been any better at "waking up," as it were, and keeping my commitments to work harder to repair our broken world.…

Written and presented by Barbara Davidson When Rabbi Lauren asked me to speak about memory, I immediately thought of my father. My father, Charles David Ross, Charlie as he was known, died thirty years ago this coming Saturday, Shabbat-Yom Kippur, Oct 3, 1987. At his funeral, Rabbi Alan Miller, of blessed memory, said “To die on Shabbat is a great honor, and to die on Yom Kippur Shabbat is the greatest honor.” Why did God…