High Holidays are a time for renewed spirituality
Ari Shortt is looking forward to celebrating Rosh Hashanah with his community. Shortt, a Ph.D. candidate studying psychology in Guelph, Ontario, will head to his neighborhood Chabad center with his wife, Eva, and two sons, ages 5 and 2, to enjoy the holiday alongside students and locals in the small Jewish community.
“It’s very vivacious,” he says of the gathering. “Sometimes, when there are fewer people, each person does more to elevate the energy levels, and so it’s rich with song.”
In the six years he’s been living there, Shortt says he has watched the community develop and his children connect with their heritage as a part of it. “I want my kids to grow up steeped in Jewish life, and that’s only possible if we have a community that’s celebrating the holidays, that’s active, that they have somewhere to go,” he explains. “I want these holidays to be their holidays.”
From Canada to the Caymans and beyond, preparations are underway for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Chabad Houses around the world are readying for services and setting their tables to share a festive meal with local residents and travelers on the holiday, which begins before sundown on Sunday, Sept. 29 and runs through Tuesday night, Oct. 1.
Chabad-Lubavitch will be serving hundreds of thousands of Jews with synagogue services, public shofar-blowings and holiday guides in 17 different languages around the world this High Holiday season. Chabad will also host thousands of free holiday services in 100 countries around the globe, catering to locals and visitors alike.
Rabbi Berel and Rikal Pewzner, who have led the Chabad Cayman Jewish Community Center in Grand Cayman since 2013, will be welcoming area residents and visitors for meals and prayer. Their High Holiday celebrations will take place at an area hotel with a cantor from England arriving to chant at services. “We are expecting a packed house of people coming together to pray and to ask Hashem for everything they need in the coming year,” he says.
In preparation for the Jewish New Year, their preschoolers have been learning about shofars and charity, a group of women came together for a pre-Rosh Hashanah challah bake, and Chabad has held classes on the Kabbalah of prayer. They’re also working with area supermarkets to make sure that there’s enough kosher food and wine to meet the needs of their growing community, which currently includes some 500 to 600 Jews, says the rabbi.
Pwezner would like to see participants walk away from the holiday empowered and energized. “I hope Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will help unleash the power of everyone’s soul, that we should have a tremendous year of personal and spiritual growth leading to increased Jewish awareness.”
Online Preparations
As with most things in life these days, preparations for the holidays are taking place online, and Chabad.org, the largest Jewish-information website, is poised to see record-breaking traffic to its High Holiday site (JewishNewYear.org), with more than 7 million unique visitors expected during the holiday season. The site offers an extensive High Holiday selection of inspirational articles, guides, videos, songs, prayers, recipes, customs and the international services directory.
The world’s most comprehensive High Holiday service directory can be found at Chabad.org/HighHolidayServices. The directory, which features events in cities and towns in every part of the world, is continually being updated with new listings.
A First in Montana
Under the Big Sky, it’s a big year for Rabbi Shneur Wolf and his wife, Chana, who are preparing to host their first set of High Holidays in Kalispell, Mont. Co-directors of the Chabad Lubavitch of Flathead Valley—a broad area home to some 300 Jewish families—they will host a community Rosh Hashanah dinner on Sunday night, as well as services throughout the holiday.
“I’m really excited for the community to come together and experience the beauty and richness of the holiday,” says Chana Wolf. “I hope that people feel comfortable here to connect to Hashem, realize the specialness of the day and tap into it.” Wolf adds that she hopes Chabad will serve as a resource for the Jews in the area for the holidays and beyond. “It’s Rosh Hashanah, it’s the beginning of the New Year, it should be the beginning for tremendous growth.”
Back where Shortt and his family will attend services, Rabbi Raphi and Mussie Steiner are preparing to fill their home, two blocks from Guelph University’s campus, with locals and students. The rabbi says he tries to include explanations during services and tell some stories and invites others to do so as well. “Here, people get involved. We even sometimes have a conversation about what we’re reading,” he says. “I try to make it meaningful, and talk about things that are happening around them to make it all the more impactful.”
The rabbi is focused on expanding programming for young families and other age groups; it’s one of his new year’s resolutions. Being an hour away from Toronto, like living anywhere Judaism isn’t on every corner, he says, people have to put effort into making it part of their lives. He encourages people to take ownership of their Judaism and be an active part of Jewish experiences.
“You’ve got to work for it,” he says. “That way, it becomes so much more meaningful.”
