Jewish Holidays

From Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge to modern psychology, the journey from remorse to lasting behavioral change reveals why Yom Kippur can be both a reckoning and a starting point.

As digital communication makes it easier to avoid difficult conversations, rabbis and educators weigh whether texts, voice notes, and social-media posts can deliver meaningful apologies.

Beyond its connection to Yom Kippur’s theme of repentance, experts believe the answer lies in Kol Nidre's core musical architecture. 

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, NLI’s curator Dr. Chaim Neria explains how the NLI came to house thousands of prayer books, noting that “it fits into the overall mission of the library.”

On Yom Kippur of 2023, Jews were pitted against Jews across the country. Thirteen days later, October 7 would remind Israelis that beneath their deepest divisions, there was still a collective “we.”

Few images capture Yom Kippur more powerfully than a person bent over a machzor (prayer book), quietly reciting its catalogue of sins.

How is it that precisely on the eve of the day when a person stands before his Creator, and his judgment for the coming year is sealed, we are commanded to eat and rejoice?

When confronted by our own absurdity and inadequacy, Judaism turns the tables and asks us to eat festive meals, sing optimistic songs, and make Rosh Hashanah into a holy celebration.

At its core, the shofar is the sound of self-sacrifice. It echoes Abraham’s willingness to sublimate his own wishes to those of God, prompting all of us to submit to a greater good.

Rosh Hashanah invites us to remove, even if only for a moment, the coverings that conceal us throughout the year, and to look inward, toward the place where our soul resides.