Resource Category: High Holy Days

L’SHANAH TOVAH TIKATEIVU V’TEICHATEIMU

With last year in the rearview mirror, and (we hope) a brighter new year on the horizon, we can see the impact of mental health on our lives more and more. As the new year begins, let us reaffirm our commitment to mental health and wellness for both ourselves and our communities.

A conversation on mental health can bring forth powerful connections with the potential to save someone’s life. To help start people talking, we created these resources for individuals to reflect upon and improve their own mental health as well as to contribute to the mental wellness of the entire Jewish community as we look forward to a sweet new year.

Rosh Hashanah is a powerful and transformative holiday, from the inspirational and poetic prayers we recite to the powerful and incisive blast of the shofar. This experience, however, cannot be fully embraced in a safe and healthy way without preparation. We encourage you to take time to fully embrace and engage with your past in a healthy and honest way. It is only by building better selves that we can build a better world.

Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, can be a challenging subject for a lot of people. For some, it is a chance to make resolutions, accept the past, and commit to a better future. But for those struggling with mental illness, this process of self-criticism and introspection can be devastating to their mental health. Therefore, we all must do our best to cultivate self-acceptance and, above all, self-forgiveness, in a healthy and collected manner.

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The Exile of Sadness – A Yom Kipper Sermon by Rabbi Daniel Greyber

Daniel Greyber is rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, NC, author of Faith Unravels: A Rabbi’s Struggle with Grief and God and recently served as Team USA Rabbi at the 19th World Maccabiah Games in Israel. Formerly a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute, faculty member at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles and the Executive Director of Camp Ramah in California, he currently serves on the editorial board of Conservative Judaism.
White male presenting in front of an audience
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Shofar Service and Our Longings

By Rabbi Sandra Cohen | I believe patience will win out. Hope will win. But…if I, for example, light Shabbat candles four times a year, and God “shows up,” as it were, four times a year… then the odds of us meeting each other are low. But if I invoke God regularly, doing mitzvot, praying, blessing, celebrating and mourning, if I actively remember God, I am more likely to experience God remembering me.
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Exploring Social Connectedness and Mental Wellness on the High Holidays with JFS Jewish Disabilities Advocates (JDA)

Co-authored with JFS Jewish Disabilities Advocates Collaborative | As the new year begins, we are thinking about social connection. Social connection has an incredible impact on our overall health, both as individuals and as a community. Having stable and supportive connections as an individual leads to better physical and mental health outcomes such as longer life, better health and increased ability to cope with stress, anxiety and depression.
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Rosh Hashanah 5783: Der Shiker is Nisht a Goy: Der Shiker Iz a Yid

Over the summer I read a wonderful book. It’s called Undelivered: the Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History. The speeches are divided into categories. The first group were speeches that went undelivered because they were thankfully unnecessary. General Dwight Eisenhower prepared a speech apologizing for the failure of D-day: Thank God, it was never delivered. Richard Nixon’s aide drafted a speech swearing he would never, ever resign from the presidency: that too was unnecessary. I then tried looking through the book for an unnecessary Jewish speech: But all I came across were the words of historian Simon Schama. There are no Jewish unnecessary speeches. He writes, “Jews essentially communicate through agreed mutual interruption.”
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High Holiday Liturgy Viewed Through the Lens of Depression

Imagine for a moment you live with depression. It is not a family member or loved one who has depression — you are the patient. You are suffering. You are in so much pain and your brain is so ill, you have thoughts of suicide. Next, consider the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: We are commanded to “choose life.” Teshuva, Tefilla and Tzedakah, repentance, prayer and charity, are your ticket to the Book of Life for another year.
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