Yom Kippur Morning, 5783/2022
Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur 5783/2022
Rosh Hashanah Morning 5783/2022
RH am from Mark Hershenson on Vimeo.
Erev Rosh Hashanah Service 5783/2022
Erev RH from Mark Hershenson on Vimeo.
Yom Kippur Morning Service 5782/2021
Kol Nidre 5782/2021
Rosh Hashanah Morning Service 5782/2021: Radical Personal Responsibility
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5782/2021: Rhythms in the Jewish Calendar Can Hold Us
Recording to come soon.
PREVIOUS YEARS
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5781/2020: Opening Our Minds and Hearts to Possibility
Rosh Hashanah Morning 5781/2020: Rising to the Occasion
Kol Nidre 5781/2020: From Good Intentions to Thoughtful Conduct.
Yom Kippur (including Yizkor) 5781/2020: Greater Good Consciousness
EREV ROSH HASHANAH – 5780/2019
Erev Rosh Hashanah. Here we are. One year ends as yet another begins. Did the past year fly by? Or was it a struggle, hour-to-hour and day-to-day? What is different this Rosh Hashanah from last Rosh Hashanah? Who are we missing dearly? Who is new in our lives? What haven’t we done in ages? What are we doing that we never imagined we would?
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ROSH HASHANAH MORNING – 5780/2019
Another Rosh Hashanah morning. Another reading of the Akedah, the Torah story of Abraham who leaves his homeland to father a nation and God’s final test of his faith. Will Abraham agree to take his son, his only son, the son that he loves into the wilderness and slaughter him?
Of course he will. He always does. Year after year. And, year after year, I find myself, rabbi, turning the text…turning it and twisting it. What can I learn, this year? What can I speak to, this year? How can this dreadful, barbaric story speak important truths to us? Or speak truth to power?
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KOL NIDREI – 5780/2019
Leaning Into Yom Kippur is about leaning into our growth edges. Rosh Hashanah lifts the veil to reveal our inadequacies. Noticing where we’ve failed, missed the mark, becomes our opportunity to notice where we can make adjustments, recalibrate, do better.
Yom Kippur is about shedding the layers of the past that no longer serve us as we make choices in the here and now that impact our future. Our liturgy for the next 23 or so hours articulates our sins over and over again: our errors in judgement, our culpability in whatever challenges we face in work or relationship, our repeated failure to focus on what really matters.
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YOM KIPPUR MORNING – 5780/2019
Whether we are here today, Jews on Yom Kippur standing before our thoughts and words and deeds, allowing ourselves to be influenced by our shared vision of what makes us good and decent, kind and loving… Or not here today, oblivious to the rituals and inner work of our season of encountering the sacred beyond us and the sacred within us, reality remains a constant.
Standing up, as this morning’s torah reading will call us to do, is choosing to be present in the here and now with the wisdom of past experience and faith that interactions, in good faith in the here and now will lead to a better tomorrow.
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