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Special Section: High Holidays
High Holidays
High Holidays
Dear Readers,
Arecent JTA piece by Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein began, “Over the past year, I have led efforts to teach, guide and coach rabbis and other clergy of every Jewish denomina-
tion. We have worked with over 500 individual members of the clergy, serving hundreds
of thousands of people since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“So, let me say this to my dear clergy colleagues: As we celebrate another High
Holiday season under the shadow of the pandemic, I know that there is nothing you need
more than support in making (or when prevented from making) impossible decisions
about vaccinations, masks, social distancing, and the integrity of worship.
“Which is why I am baffled as to why some would add to your burden with irrespon-
sible, pain-inducing criticism that could only worsen the challenge, trauma, and moral
injury that our clergy are experiencing at this moment.”
Rabbi Epstein currently serves on the faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of
North America and is executive director of the Center for Rabbinic Innovation, where
she teaches Jewish clergy of all denominations, so she’s probably heard plenty of stories
from across the nation.
Last year, I was deeply involved with making decisions for the High Holidays for my
congregation, so I know well the stress. This year, from my perch as Jewish News editor, I
see what our local congregations continue to grapple with…laboring over plans and then
making last-minute changes. It’s not easy—weighing tradition against the latest health
and safety recommendations.
As we begin the High Holidays, please consider Rabbi Epstein’s observations and
instead of criticizing, express appreciation to our congregations’ clergy, staff, and lay
leaders who are working overtime to keep everyone safe this season—managing expec-
tations, altering plans, creating new prayer options—all while attempting to provide
spiritual, meaningful, and beautiful services.
During uncertain times, one of the best proven remedies to combat the cycle of anx-
iety is to express gratitude. So, let’s make ourselves feel better (if motivation is needed)
and say thank you to everyone involved for their dedication to making our entrance into
5782, the safest, healthiest, and happiest possible. Thank you all!
L’Shanah Tovah,
Terri Denison Editor
2021
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High Holidays
SUKKOT BEGINS AT SUNDOWN ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 Sukkot’s message is essential during our climate crisis
Esti Shapiro
(JTA)—Growing up in the temperamental weather of Denver, Colorado, it was not at all unusual to experience rain, high winds, heat waves, or even snow on Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival that typically falls in September or October. Some years even saw all of these dramatic weather conditions over the course of the weeklong holiday. This always made the exercise of building a sukkah, a temporary and fragile structure to “dwell” in for the week, feel all the more absurd.
Yet Sukkot has always been my favorite holiday. At its core, the exercise of building and being in a sukkah is one of both trust and humility. While we try our best to construct a sukkah that is stable, we don’t go to extraordinary lengths to fortify it; impermanence and fragility are a feature, not a flaw. We design our sukkah to be easily disassembled and reassembled each year, often replacing materials such as the natural roof, or schach, with time. This annual ritual of (re)construction is also a celebratory moment, an opportunity to acknowledge the cyclical nature of Jewish time and life.
When I was in architecture school, we learned about the Ise Jingu Shrine in Japan, which has been ritually deconstructed and reconstructed on two alternating sites every 20 years for over a thousand years. This practice is designed explicitly to preserve the knowledge of traditional Japanese wood joinery techniques and craft as well as the physical condition of the structure itself. In designing something to be temporary, and crafting it out of renewable materials (in this case lumber grown in vast forests surrounding the site of the shrine), a far greater permanence is achieved. Ultimately the ritual lasts much longer than any building or structure constructed only once, regardless of how impenetrably it was designed, can.
The similarities and shared wisdom of this shrine and the sukkah are evident. These examples of ancient construction knowledge and ritual run counter to everything else we think we know about architecture. We tend to think of construction as an exercise in dominance over the environment, an attempt to protect ourselves from the natural forces of weather and erosion.
But the impulse to build bigger, stronger, more monumental, and longer-lasting structures is one of the most direct and harmful contributors to our current climate crisis. Today, concrete is the most widely used construction material globally, accounting for approximately 8% of carbon emissions worldwide. More broadly, nearly 40% of global carbon emissions are a result of building construction and operation. The combative attitude that most of our structures express toward the environment is quite literally destroying it in real time at this very moment.
Conversely, on Sukkot we acknowledge that no construction endeavor is ever so enduring. We recognize uncertainty and vulnerability as fundamental to the human experience. We do not allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking that building something strong enough to resist the weather outside makes us impervious to the more pervasive element of time. A sukkah does not attempt to resist these conditions; it tenuously embraces them. It is in this very act of humility, in recognizing the need for continuous rebuilding, that the ritual remains enduring. There are few structures in the world older than the practice of building sukkahs on this week of each year.
When I teach about Sukkot to my religious school students, we talk about leaving our homes for the fragility of the sukkah as a metaphor for venturing outside of our comfort zones. The vulnerability of the holiday challenges each of us to leave what we know—what is easy—for an opportunity for growth. I would argue that this is an urgent and timely lesson, not just for Jewish people, and not just this week.
The reality of climate change is that it will make almost all of us a whole lot less comfortable over the coming years and decades. With unprecedented forest fires, floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters across the United States and world, our current condition is requiring us to drastically reconsider the ways we live and interact with our environment.
Acting with humility and acknowledging our vulnerability may mean accepting a broader range of temperatures as “comfortable” on our thermostats or resisting the convenience of personal car ownership. More importantly, however, this will require us to act not just as individuals but as a collective through policy and structural change to resist the tendencies of human ego toward building bigger and stronger and more destructive societies.
On Sukkot, and all year, we should remember that endurance is achieved not through material monumentality, but through the much more nebulous constructions of the social: tradition, interpersonal connection, ritual, and celebration.
So this year, when I bundle up in extra layers and blankets to brave a brisk autumn evening for a holiday dinner, I will take an extra moment to appreciate the insight of our ancestors. As I take in the familiar sound of wood-framed canvas walls gently swaying, the smell of pine branch schach overhead, and the glimpse of a full moon through its needles, I will consider how our tradition has always recognized the means to a healthy, livable, harmonious, and enduring, if uncertain, future.
Esti Shapiro is a designer and writer, trained as an architect, as well as a religious school teacher.
This article originally appeared on Alma, a sister site of JTA.
High Holidays New children’s books for Yom Kippur and Sukkot
Penny Schwartz
BOSTON (JTA)—Jewish families can bid farewell to the summer and usher in the Jewish New Year by cracking open these engaging new holiday books.
Jonah’s Tale of a Whale Barry L. Schwartz; illustrated by James Rey Sanchez Apples & Honey Press; ages 5–9
Kids will be engrossed by this cartoonlike, age-appropriate retelling of the story of Jonah based on the eponymous biblical book that is read aloud in synagogues on Yom Kippur.
Jonah the prophet is not happy when God instructs him to warn the people of Nineveh to change their wicked behavior, thinking Israel’s enemies should be punished for their misdeeds. To avoid doing what God asks, Jonah flees on a ship, is thrown overboard in a storm and swallowed by a whale. Jonah realizes he was wrong, however, and when he is freed from inside the whale, he warns the people of Nineveh, who take heed and begin to act kindly to each other.
Barry L. Schwartz, a rabbi and acclaimed author, balances the captivating adventure with the moral tale of the power of forgiveness. James Rey Sanchez’s colorful, cinematic illustrations bring the action to life with drama and touches of humor.
Starlight Soup: A Sukkot Story Elana Rubinstein; illustrated by Jennifer Naalchigar Apples & Honey Press; ages 7–10
Just in time for Sukkot, Saralee Siegel is back in a chapter-book series about the endearing, spunky schoolage girl whose magical sense of smell saves the day in the original, Once Upon an Apple Cake: A Rosh Hashanah Story.
Saralee’s grandfather, Zayde, the patriarch of the family’s popular Siegel House restaurant, asks her to create a zippy new recipe to excite customers for the seven-day fall festival, when Jews eat in small, open-roofed huts and welcome guests. Standing in her family’s large sukkah, Saralee’s senses waft up to the starlit skies and fill her with the fragrant aromas. Magically the flavors transform pots of boiling water into Starlight Soup— it tastes like everyone’s favorite food.
Meanwhile, Saralee’s best friend, Harold, whose family owns a rival Jewish restaurant, is plotting his own Sukkot celebration. Trouble stirs the pot when Saralee’s soup overpowers everyone’s taste buds and ruins their appetites.
What will Saralee do to make it all better? The book’s school setting is Jewish with racially diverse kids. Jennifer Naalchigar’s black-and-white, cartoon-style illustrations enliven the pages.
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High Holidays
Is it safe to attend High Holiday services? Should kids? COVID-19 High Holiday questions, answered.
Philissa Cramer
(JTA)—For the second year, COVID-19 has made it so Jews who want to attend High Holidays services must undergo a complicated risk calculation.
Is it safe to go to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Should children attend? Is the shofar—the horn whose blasts punctuate the holy days—a potential vector of disease?
Last year, five months into the global pandemic that has killed more than 4.5 million people globally, the answers were fairly straightforward, if dispiriting: Stay home, or at least stay masked and very far apart. Anyone could be carrying the disease, and anyone could catch it.
This year, the situation is more complex. Most American adults have been vaccinated, with the uptake of vaccination among Jews among the highest of any religious group, but children under 12 aren’t eligible for vaccination. For a small, but vociferous segment of Americans, grudging acceptance of masking last year has morphed into antipathy this year.
Meanwhile, the highly transmissible Delta variant, alongside evidence of potentially waning protection from vaccines and emerging data showing that even vaccinated people can catch and transmit COVID-19, further complicate the picture.
“This is going to be a personal decision that will be dependent upon many factors,” says Dr. Aaron Glatt, a rabbi and epidemiologist who has spent the pandemic making medical information accessible to others in his Orthodox community in suburban New York.
“What type of shul you will be going into, the incidence of vaccination in that shul, the incidence of risk factors in your personal family—is everybody vaccinated? If they are, are they high risk? There are a tremendous number of variables,” says Glatt, who is the chief of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiologist at Mount Sinai South Nassau on Long Island and an assistant rabbi at the Young Israel of Woodmere.
He adds, “And it also depends on the level of risk that people are willing to take with all those variables taken into account.”
So, what is a Jew supposed to do? We’ve answered a few of the most frequently asked questions about how to observe High Holidays during the coronavirus pandemic, round two.
Is it safe to travel for Rosh Hashanah?
The appeal of getting far-flung family members together to share the holiday is undeniable. And a lot has been learned about how to manage risk during pandemic travel. So, jumping on a plane may feel like a better idea this year than last year.
But there are some caveats: Someone who is vaccinated and heads to visit people who are vaccinated in an area with a high vaccination rate is at less risk than if one party isn’t vaccinated or even if both are, but there is a high level of community transmission.
Glatt advises people considering traveling to consider “where you’re traveling to [and] the incidence of COVID in that area.” In some parts of the country, especially in the South, hospitals are near or even over capacity amid the Delta-fueled surge. They may not be safe destinations when it comes to COVID-19 or any other health issue that can arise while traveling.
The Centers for Disease Control is advising Americans to delay travel until fully vaccinated, and even then, to wear a mask while in shared transportation. Unvaccinated travelers, including children, are urged to test before and after traveling and stay away from especially vulnerable people upon their return.
Is it safe to attend synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?
Here, again, context matters, and so does one’s own risk tolerance. In a community where transmission is high and vaccination
High Holidays
rates are relatively low, the risk from praying together in person is going to be higher than in a community where most people are vaccinated and there are relatively few cases.
People who are unvaccinated are always at more risk than people who have been fully vaccinated: They are much more likely to require hospitalization or to die after catching COVID-19.
The synagogues being considered to attend almost certainly have policies in place. It’s also generally possible to request more information before deciding whether to attend.
What is the congregation’s policy on masking? A mask requirement offers a low-cost, low-effort safeguard against transmission. It is also a good signifier of a conservative approach to safety.
Are vaccinations required for eligible people? Some synagogues are strongly urging vaccinations, while others are requiring them for everyone over 12. Some are even requiring attendees to prove their vaccination by sharing their vaccine card ahead of time or at the door. (In some places, including Florida, requiring vaccination or asking for evidence of vaccination is illegal.)
Is any prayer taking place outdoors? Some synagogues are moving as much of their services as possible outside, to open-sided tents where transmission is less likely. Glatt says all communities should strive to offer some outdoor options for people who feel more comfortable there.
How well does air circulate? Since last year, it’s become clearer that good ventilation is an important factor in preventing the spread of disease. Synagogues that have good airflow will offer safer experiences than synagogues with poor air circulation.
Many Jewish communities, especially Orthodox ones, are home to a wide range of perspectives on whether masking and distancing should be required at this stage of the pandemic. Glatt says synagogues should be advocating vaccination, calling that “the correct medical and halachic recommendation,” referring to Jewish law. But he also says he believes that synagogues can safely accommodate people with a wide range of approaches to COVID-19.
“There should be areas where people who are vaccinated and are concerned should be able to daven [pray] with a mask on, and everybody in that area should have a mask on,” he said. “At the same time, I have not made the recommendation that everybody should be masked in every situation at every shul. I think there are people who might be uncomfortable with that for various reasons and we need to try to accommodate them as well.”
Should children under 12 go to High Holiday services this year?
Children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination in the United States; government approval for a vaccine for kids is expected sometime before the end of the year. That means the children’s services that most synagogues hold on the High Holidays are effectively for unvaccinated people only, at a time when the Delta variant has elevated pediatric hospital admissions to pandemic-high levels. It also means that including children in adult services reduces the proportion of vaccinated people in the room.
Glatt describes the question of whether and how to include children as one that is concerning, with no one-size-fits-all answer.
“I think that’s a decision that every shul has to make, how they wish to handle that. If you’re dealing with an elderly population, to have them sitting next to younger children that aren’t vaccinated and their mask wearing is of some concern…I think that needs to be addressed,” he says. “If you’re dealing mostly with a younger population, they’re vaccinated mostly, they’re willing to take the chance—that may be a different situation. It’s a concern.”
Many synagogues are holding their children’s services outside to mitigate risk. But not every synagogue has that option, and in some communities, that may not be everyone’s preference. It also could be uncomfortably hot in much of the South at the beginning of September.
Glatt says parents should take appropriate precautions, but he notes that many children are in communal settings already by attending school, which conveys an equivalent level of risk. (Tens of thousands of children nationwide have already spent time in quarantine this school year because of in-school exposures to COVID-19.)
“I do think children should be in shul,” Glatt says. “If this was the only situation where they were being exposed, that might be a different story. But they’re getting together anyway.”
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Is it safe to blow the shofar in an indoor space?
Images of people blowing shofars with surgical masks over their openings became a visual trademark of last year’s High Holidays. This year, vaccines and widely available COVID-19 testing mean it’s relatively straightforward to ensure that the shofar does not spread disease.
“If the person blowing the shofar is vaccinated and asymptomatic, that should be fine. Let it blow, possibly not right next to everybody else,” Glatt says, noting that the person should also have no known virus exposures.
Some synagogues are bringing their congregations outside to hear the shofar at the end of the service, rather than during
continued on page 20
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continued from page 19 it. To play it extra safe, others are requiring a negative PCR test—the more reliable type of test on the market—for shofar blowers in the days before the holiday.
What if someone at services had COVID-19?
That’s a realistic concern. If Rosh Hashanah were today, the virus is so prevalent in the United States that in some places, there would be nearly a 100% chance that someone in the room would have COVID-19 for any event of 100 people, a typical size for smallerthan-usual services. That includes almost all counties in Florida, currently the hardest-hit state, according to an online “COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool” produced by a team of researchers.
The CDC has clear guidelines about what to do if someone is exposed to COVID-19—which it says happens when spending more than 15 minutes total over a 24 hour period near someone with the virus. If that happens, get tested 3–5 days after the exposure and wear a mask around other people until receiving a negative result. If the result is positive, isolate for 10 days, even without symptoms.
In the early days of the pandemic, worship services were identified as key vectors of disease in both the United States and Israel, in part because some people continued to attend them after reducing other contacts and in part because of the kinds of activities—including singing—that typically happens at them. So following post-exposure recommendations could be key to making sure that High Holiday services don’t become spreading events.
What if the person who had COVID19 was all the way on the other side of the room during services? Does that count as an exposure? Glatt’s answer points to the uncertainty that’s swirling as the Jewish world prepares to enter 5782.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “But it’s really unknown.”
Shira Hanau contributed reporting.
