By Dr. Shaiya Rothberg, Teacher in Bible and Jewish Thought

Zohar on the Holidays of Tishrei Sourcesheet
Zohar on the Holidays of Tishrei E-shiur

Jewish life constitutes a mosaic of ritual, law and narrative. Our most sacred text, the Five Books of Moses, weaves these elements into the holy story around which we build our lives as Jews and from which we derive the precepts of Jewish law and religion. The holidays of Tishrei are all rooted in that story of creation, covenant, slavery and redemption. This rootedness involves not only the legal codes that God reveals to Moses at different stages of the narrative, but also the sacred plot itself: Our sages discovered connections between Rosh Hashanah and the creation of the world. Sukkot is explicitly associated in the Torah with the Exodus. And the sages calculate Yom Kippur as the very day on which God fully forgave His People Israel for the sin of the Golden Calf.

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By Vered Hollander Goldfarb of the Bible faculty and Rabbi Gail Diamond, Associate Director

Slichot 13 Midot Sourcesheet (pdf)
Slichot 13 Midot E-shiur (pdf)

The section known as “God’s 13 Attributes (midot)”, from Exodus 34:6-7, forms the heart of the Slichot (Forgiveness) prayers of the High Holiday season. Along with Birkhat Kohanim and Kriat Shma, it, as Torah verse, is amongst the oldest texts in Jewish liturgy, but unlike the priestly blessing, it was not originally meant as prayer. Its development into this role is fascinating historically and spiritually.

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By R. Shlomo Zacharow

As we rush back to our daily routines following the majestic two day Rosh Hashanah, it is easy to overlook the third day of Tishrei, Tzom Gedaliah, a minor fast.  When the First Temple was destroyed, in 586 BCE, a remnant of Jews was left in the land, and the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah ben Ahikam to rule over them.  Radical segments of the Jewish population viewed him as a Babylonian puppet and collaborator, and a Jew killed him, removing the last vestige of Jewish sovereignty in theland ofIsrael.

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