Your Essential Rosh Hashanah Links from the Hartman Institute

With Rosh Hashanah in our minds and hearts, we are pleased to share new articles for the holiday by David Hartman and Donniel Hartman, as well as additional articles from our scholars. 

Rabbi Dr. David Hartman

•  David Hartman illuminates the significance of Rosh Hashanah through an analysis of the Akeidah:

Two of the most important biblical stories we revisit every Rosh Hashana are the binding of Isaac (known in the Hebrew parlance as the Akeida), and Abraham’s argument with God regarding the fate of the inhabitants of Sedom. These two accounts represent two different religious anthropologies: one of sacrificial self-surrender, and one of assertive moral challenge.

Read “The Akeidah”: A Window into God’s Humanity and Our Own 

• Connecting events of today with the timeless relevance of Rosh Hashanah, Donniel Hartman gives a perspective of tshuva (repentance) in relation to Middle East politics in Tshuva as the Foundation for the Renewed Israeli-Palestinian Discourse. 

 

• On a lighter note, Stuart Schoffman writes about the tumult of Jerusalem in the tourist season–and the city’s venerable history as a tourist destination, as chronicled by American literary giants Herman Melville and Mark Twain. Read Jerusalem Travel Sets the Mind Spinning.

 

• In Seder Rosh Hashanah: Special Foods and New Year Wishes, SHI fellow Noam Zion details the various edible peculiarities that have been customary on Rosh Hashanah throughout history, and their deeper significance.

The Shalom Hartman Institute wishes all of our readers a happy, healthy, and a sweet New Year! 

 

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Shana tova from Shalom Hartman Institute

Enjoy the holiday. Spend it with friends and family. Think about the past year and the year ahead. Look inward, and hope outward. See our special content section and the exclusive new holiday video from Donniel Hartman on the Hartman Institute main website.

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Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi: Preparing for Yom Kippur

Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi, Hartman Institute Center for Lay Leadership Education Director, talks in this interview on IBA Israel English TV about how to prepare for Yom Kippur and why it is something we should do all year-round.

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Wall Street’s fragility – and our own

Wall Street tilting

Rabbi Bill Berk, Director of the Center for Rabbinic Enrichment at the Hartman Institute, links the fragility of the current economic situation with our fragility at the Days of Awe in this excellent piece:

If the meltdown has proved anything, it’s the precariousness of the human condition. When properties, pension plans and insurance policies lose their value overnight, and even money in the bank is not as secure as in its proverbial past, one realizes how tenuous the things of this world are, how fragile and fleeting.

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Shanah tovah from Shalom Hartman Institute

Post-holiday update

This came in too late for responding to over the חג – I really like the sentiments:

Wishing you:

• 1 year of good health
• 12 months of abundant parnassah (livelihood)
• 365 days of brachot (blessings)
• 8,760 hours of happiness and shalom ba’it (peaceful relationships)
• 525,600 minutes of hatzlacha (success)
• 31,536,000 seconds of menuchot ha das (tranquility and settledness)

in the coming year!

שנה טובה

Shana Tova

Shanah Tovah

No matter how you spell it, we wish you a Happy (Jewish) New Year. May 5769 be a year of peace, health, personal growth, spiritual development, improved economic and security situations for Israel, the Jewish people, the USA, Canada, Europe and the world at large.

For spiritual and practical insights to the holiday season, please click here to read and view material on the Hartman Institute website.

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Donniel Hartman: On Rosh Hashana 5769 rethink who you are

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman, Co-Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute, talks about the notion that the human life needs to embody a dimension of reflectiveness, a dimension of review, an aspect of rethinking who you are, and what you have achieved in your life, so that you never see who you are in fact and what you have created in your life as the ultimate expression of who you ought to be. There always has to be a gap between who you are and who you ought to be.

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New Years greetings, thoughts from Hartman Institute

Shana Tovah from Shalom Hartman Institute

A special content section featuring personal, academic, and practical information about the upcoming month of holidays – from Rosh Hashana to Hoshana Raba – is now on the Shalom Hartman Institute website. We are offering video, essays, articles, educational material and an entire course syllabus for you.

Items include:

• Reflections on the existential rhythms of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur by Rabbi David Hartman
• Seder Rosh Hashanah: Symbolic foods and New Year wishes by Noam Zion
• Why learn Torah? by Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi
• And more…

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Education channel now on Hartman Institute website

Education of community leaders, rabbis, Jewish education professionals, and, of course, students, among others, are one of the main areas of focus of Shalom Hartman Institute. But we want to help the teachers teach, as well. So, we have created a special “channel” of content on the main Institute website devoted to Education.

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