Preparing for the High Holidays

for ReformJudaism.org

As summer winds down and the back-to-school season approaches, so, too, do the High Holidays. Jewish tradition provides us with several reminders of the upcoming Days of Awe, as well as a number of ways we can prepare for them.

The days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are known at the Days of Awe, or Yamim Noraim in Hebrew. During this period, individuals examine their behavior over the past year, consider atonement for misdeeds, and seek a closeness with God. Practically, this is done through repentance, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The Shabbat between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur is known as Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Return. The name of this Sabbath is derived from the first words of the week’s haftarah, Shuvah Yisrael, “return, O Israel” (Hosea 14:2). The custom in synagogues in Eastern Europe had been for rabbis to give impassioned pleas for repentance during their sermons on this Shabbat.

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Check out Jvillage’s High Holiday+    page.

For more information and ideas visit our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

Brooklyn Shofar FlashMob - a blast of Terror

With Rosh Hashanah one month away, this should ease you into a High Holiday frame of mind.

The Youtube video reveals the shofar in a piece of performance art organized by Art Kibbutz that has serious intent.  Some take it as a travesty, a blasphemy...what do YOU think? 


 


Check out Jvillage’s High Holiday+    page.

Also, check out our High Holidays Spotlight Kit

Remembering Arnold Scaasi, Jewish Designer to the Stars

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

Known for his tasteful gaudiness—and Barbra Streisand’s memorable 1969 Oscars outfit—the Montreal-born fashion icon believed you never had to tone down to move up

By Rachel Shukert for Tablet

Arnold Scaasi, the legendary fashion designer whose couture creations graced the backs of the greatest Hollywood stars and ladies who lunched (and for all I know, continue to), died last week at the age of 85. Born to a Jewish family in Montreal (his original last name was Isaacs, the spelling of which he ingeniously reversed in order to achieve a certain Continental flair), Scaasi was known above all for his ornate, highly embellished evening gowns and ensembles—perhaps the most famous of his creations was the sheer Peter Pan-collared pantsuit Barbra Streisand wore to the 1969 Oscars, in which she stumbled on her way to the podium (take that, Jennifer Lawrence, you copycat) to collect her Best Actress Oscar for Funny Girl. You remember it—it has all those black sequined balls hanging off of it and was the kind of drop dead chic that would land her on all the worst-dressed lists in this age of nude mermaid fishtail gowns but will be remembered until the last cockroach eats the last blade of grass on a desiccated Planet Earth.

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Bikel’s Gift As An Actor

With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.

George Robinson, Special To The Jewish Week

Last week YIVO sent out a very special e-mail. It contained a link to Theodore Bikel’s last public performance, at the organization’s 13th Annual Heritage Luncheon on June 18. Bikel was the principle honoree, recipient of YIVO’s lifetime achievement award, and in a video clip (which can be seen on YouTube) he sits very erect in his wheelchair, guitar on his lap, singing “Di zun vet aruntergeyn/The Sun Soon Will Be Setting.” The song is a collaboration between the great Yiddish poet Moishe Leib Halpern and composer Ben Yomen, but the English adaptation is by Bikel himself, who sings at one point, “we’ll fly/Leaving earth far below/To a land where all longing does go.”

The voice is not as booming as it once was, there is just the slightest tremor, but it is unmistakably Bikel’s and, as always, he doesn’t just sing the song, he inhabits it.

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Yolande, The Egyptian Woman Who Spied For Israel

 With no Jewish holidays coming up immediately, we bring you profiles of some well known and some not so well known Jews. Enjoy.
 

By Leah Falk for Jewniverse

Gone are the days, it seems, when one could get recruited for espionage at a cocktail party. (Or maybe we’re just going to the wrong parties.) But that’s what happened to Yolande Harmer, an Egyptian Jewish spy for the Haganah, the precursor to the Israeli Defense Forces, whose intelligence became instrumental to the founding of Israel. A new film directed by Dan Wolman and produced by Harmer’s granddaughter Miel de Botton, Yolande: An Unsung Heroine, tells the story of her extraordinary, often dangerous life.


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