Spirituality

Who is in the minyan of your life? Who is in your inner circle of friends and family?

This is one of the spiritual questions of Sukkot. While we focus on personal ethical transformation during most of the High Holy Days, Sukkot primarily takes place on our home turf, in the back yard or balcony, where we build that unique work of Jewish art - the Sukkah.

Even people who live in mansions go out into the yard and take their meals in the intentionally fragile sukkah. A sturdy sukkah is an oxymoron, in my opinion. We are taken to the root awareness of the impermanence of life deliberately by building a sukkah that can't stand all year.

While images of matters such as the earthquake disaster in Turkey bring this point dramatically into our eyes. The sukkah makes us sit in our awareness.

Ask most Jews what the holiest day of the year is and assuredly the answer you will most likely hear is “Yom Kippur.” While Yom Kippur is certainly a very holy day, did you know that within the Jewish tradition there is also a deeply-held conviction that each and every Shabbat is the holiest day of the year? This is why Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is also referred to as the “Sabbath of Sabbaths.” Every Shabbat, Jews practice traditions that are enriched with spiritual meaning. In this article, let us explore these deeper meanings.

Chapter 2
by Estelle Frankel

“Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest and let the spirits fly in and out.”—Rumi

 “There is a time to speak and a time to be silent”―Ecclesiastes

“For You, Silence is praise.”—Psalms 65:2