Jews are obliged to throw parties and to remember. On Sukkot, we are instructed to celebrate the harvest in a particular and highly festive way. We celebrate by sharing the bounties of our labor and living in temporary structures. But our celebration is only complete when it is accompanied with full awareness of sacrifice, community, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

"This is who the Jewish people are; we carry everything we've been from the Torah till now, and this is the record of how we have done it."

It is common for many diaspora Jews in America today to not be fluent in the Hebrew language, to have ambivalence about the sacred texts, and to feel intense heartbreak at what is happening in State of Israel. These complexities can become barriers to practice, but Rabbi Ariel Stone invites you to be active in prayer and to bring those complexities of your relationship to Jewishness with you, as Jews have always done in their study and practice.

When minhagim collide! Minhag, like the siddur, is close to us. At times, it is even closer to us than halakhah, because minhag lives with us and grows with our particular community. So what happens when you encounter a minhag that is unlike your own? Does it disturb you, or does it invite you to have deeper appreciation for what you have and what others have?