Yeshua G. B. Tolle, at The Blogs

Yeshua G. B. Tolle

A Jewish Educator from the Midwest

Oct 12, 2024, 4:40 PM

The Mystery of Kol Nidrei: Embracing the New Year

The text that begins the Yom Kippur service is a mystery. When did Kol Nidrei enter the liturgy? Who composed it? What community first adopted it? No one has definitively answered these questions. From the ninth century on, great...

Oct 3, 2024, 12:58 PM

Joy and Judgment on Rosh Hashanah

Public domain image sourced from the Library of Congress. Detail from cover of The Southern Jewish weekly (Jacksonville, Fla.), September 16, 1955

"The essential purpose of Rosh ha-Shanah prayers is that his great Name be sanctified in the universe." This one line from the traditional Ashkenazi siddur, Nehora ha-Shalem, sums up the whole Rosh Hashanah tefillah. Its succinctness must have appealed...

About Me

Yeshua G. B. Tolle earned his PhD in English at the University of Michigan. He is a 2024–25 Tikvah Krauthammer Fellow. His work appears in scholarly journals and magazines, including the Jewish Review of Books and the Tel Aviv Review of Books.