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Yesh Atid MK Debbie Biton taken out by Knesset guards during a a Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting, at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on June 25, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90/ File)

Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll

Making Yom Kippur count

Fasting is easy. What’s hard is taking responsibility not for our close circles, but for those with whom we vehemently disagree

(iStock)

Ben Lazarus

Who am I kidding? Not G-d

I have questions, and I’m angry sometimes, but Yom Kippur isn’t about what He did to me; rather, I need to account for what I have and haven’t accomplished

FILE: A rabbinical student reads at the Synagogue of the Black Hills in Rapid City, S.D., September 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Kristina Barker)

Jon Argaman

What I learned from editing 50 High Holiday sermons

The topics ranged from ICE to Israel, but the rabbis I worked with all sought answers to the same question: How can Jews live with chronic crisis?

'Jonah Cast Forth by the Whale,' by Gustave Doré, 1874. (National Library of Poland, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Tanya White

Rereading Jonah after NAZA

Abraham is my hero for his complex faith, but Jonah’s intense loyalty to the Jewish people spotlights the fallacy of extending compassion to just everyone

From an illuminated 'Ashamnu,' by Nathan [ben Samson] of Mezhyrich, 1723, in the repentance liturgy. (Wikipedia)

Mijal Bitton

How to fail Yom Kippur

I take my lesson from ‘Severance’ and its portrait of failure; to safeguard against it, I’ll be preparing a personal confession and naming my hopes for the future

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, right, and his wife Rama Duwaji wave at members of media after a news conference at Gracie Mansion, January 12, 2026, in New York. (AP/Yuki Iwamura)

Binyamin Krauss

My school will pray outside Gracie Mansion on Friday

Mamdani likely won’t be there, but the kids will learn about their civic responsibilities, their privileges, and how Jews who feel unsafe gather and pray, aloud

(courtesy)

Sarit Zehavi

What ‘Naza’ really means: The truth about collateral damage

The filmmakers mistook the IDF’s system for limiting civilian casualties for something far darker. They should have asked me; I helped build it

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Sep 20, 2026, 6:52 PM

When Opinion Becomes the Dictatorship’s Weapon

How Iran’s Intellectual Infrastructure Has Been Erased For over 45 years, the Iranian dictatorship has engaged in systematic social and political engineering of society. By deliberately eroding the boundary between facts and ideological opinion, the regime has successfully created a...

Gershon Blumstein

Sep 20, 2026, 6:15 PM

The Judaism That Refuses to Choose

What Conservative Judaism Can Teach a Fragmented Jewish World Judaism has never been a tradition of easy answers. The rabbis did not build Jewish civilization by eliminating disagreement. They preserved it, studied it, argued through it, and carried it forward....

Sep 20, 2026, 5:59 PM

Why I Took a College Basketball Team to Berlin

Davidson College basketball players at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

My father passed away almost exactly one year ago. My dad was deeply proud of the work I do in Holocaust education. But I think what mattered most to him was not simply that I was teaching history. He believed...

Deborah Danino Harkham

Sep 20, 2026, 5:23 PM

We are all Jews of Yom Kippur

Jews praying at the Western Wall in October 2025, on the eve of Yom Kippur. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Yom Kippur, A Sanctuary of Time In almost every Jewish community, there are people known as the "Jews of Yom Kippur": those who never enter a synagogue during the year except on that day. Some come as soon as Kol...

Sep 20, 2026, 5:20 PM

Echoes of the Past, Rituals of the Future

It was the morning before Yom Kippur and I hadn't done tashlich yet, but there was another errand involving a trip to nature on my checklist; I needed to deposit some bones. The idea of making a pilgrimage to the...

Nicholas Jagdeo

Sep 20, 2026, 5:14 PM

At Least We Don’t Need Forgiveness For Inaction

"Justice, justice you shall pursue"... does not entail patting ourselves on our backs because we have raised an Israel flag and said a prayer, but in pursuing meaningful action: justice for Israel. It’s been three years and three months since Understanding...

Sagit Alkobi Fishman

Sep 20, 2026, 5:12 PM

The Yom Kippur Lesson Israel Still Needs After October 7

A recording and transcription of the Agranat Commission. (Lkahan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

More than half a century ago, on Yom Kippur, Israel was taken by surprise. Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked, an intelligence conception that had seemed solid collapsed within hours, and a country that entered the holiday with a sense...

Sep 20, 2026, 5:10 PM

The Nature of the Five Inuyim on Yom Kippur 5787

A Fundamental Chakirah in the Meaning of Inuy One of the central mitzvos of Yom Kippur is the obligation of “ועניתם את נפשותיכם” — “You shall afflict your souls.” The Torah commands us to experience inuy, affliction, on the holiest...

Sep 20, 2026, 5:07 PM

Kapparot Where Everyone Stays Alive — Including the Chicken

Teshuvah, Tzedakah, and the Moral Evolution of a Jewish Tradition After Shabbat ended, following Havdalah, I was told that I could perform kapparot in one of two places: on Avenue J near East 29th Street, or on President Street in...

Sep 20, 2026, 5:00 PM

What 1973 Still Teaches Us About National Survival

Merkava tank on the Gaza border. Photo ©️ T. Book, 2026

This week, Israel marks fifty-three years since the Yom Kippur War, and the anniversary lands with a weight it has never carried before, because on October 7, 2023, we watched history repeat itself with terrible precision. Fifty years apart, on...

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