Open Search form

Elul

Apply for a Blog

Sep 6, 2026, 2:51 PM

The Angel from Worcester

Worcester Cemetery: The Gravesite of Rav Avraham Kaufman

How prayers at Ancestors’ Graves Opened the Way to an Astonishing Encounter “Do you mean you met Elijah the Prophet?” I was giving a sermon at a shtiebel by my brother Baruch’s home in Brooklyn near Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. ...

Sep 6, 2026, 7:25 AM

Rising from Loss: Rosh Hashanah and 9/11 Remembered

Rosh Hashanah, literally meaning the “head of the year” in Hebrew, marks the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days and serves as one of the most sacred observances in Judaism. Traced to biblical roots and observed on the...

Sep 4, 2026, 7:21 PM

Music, Selichot and the Search for Meaning

For some Jews, the alternative to musical Selichot isn’t traditional Selichot. It’s no Selichot at all. This week, leading rabbis in Bnei Brak came out strongly against the growing phenomenon of musical Selichot, concerned that something so serious and sacred...

Sep 4, 2026, 3:31 PM

Hishtavus or Hishtadlus: The Proper Attitude for the Year Ahead

As the High Holidays approach, it is easy to become confused between two seemingly conflicting ideas. On the one hand, there is the common conception of the Day of Judgment as a time of strict reckoning in which we...

Sarah Tuttle-Singer

Sep 4, 2026, 3:16 PM

God is in the field — but I live in the city

We are elbows-deep into Elul, and they tell us that God is in the fields. This is an old teaching: During the month before the High Holy Days, the King leaves the palace and comes out to meet us where...

Dovid Flinkenstein

Sep 4, 2026, 12:49 AM

The Day After 9/11

On September 12, 2001, while the ruins were still burning and America was struggling to comprehend what had happened, there was a knock at my door. The man standing there was the last person I expected to see. He was...

Talyah Ginsberg

Sep 3, 2026, 10:57 PM

The dogs have a surveillance committee

Apparently, pet-sitting now requires chicken, brown rice, color-coded vegetables, and security clearance. I am currently looking after two of the most precious dogs on earth. This is not hyperbole. They are a boy-and-girl pair of such sweetness that within approximately...

Sep 3, 2026, 5:25 AM

Swaying and Bouncing with the Ostrova Biale Rebbe

"Dude, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need to leave and head back to New York to drive my Rebbe from the airport to his apartment" My 26 year old brain didn't understand, did our President's...

Sep 2, 2026, 10:39 PM

What My Grandfather Knew About Jewish Survival

I was born in a tiny town in Arizona. And when I say tiny, I mean reaaaally tiny. The streets were dirt, people rode horses, and outside my bedroom window, I could see the stars ever so clearly. Our closest city—or...

Sep 2, 2026, 5:22 AM

Have You No Sense of Decency?

Army lawyer Joseph Welch at the House Un-American Hearings, June 9, 1954. (CalVet Connect)

I woke up this morning (Thank Gd), made some coffee, and with my dog sitting on my lap, began reading the news. And there it was – the Prime Minister's wife suggested that the fact that a former senior...

Load more