Rabbi Arthur Weiner

L’shana Tovah! I was delighted to see so many of you in the synagogue on the High Holidays this year, and connect with others over livestream.   In many ways, this was the first normal (I hesitate to use the term ) High Holiday season since 2019 that did not include the difficult COVID restrictions and precautions of the past three years.   It felt both familiar, and wonderful.   I look forward to seeing you often in the new year. And now they have concluded.   An intense seven weeks of effort and preparation ended on Monday night with the blowing of the Shofar to mark the end of Yom Kippur.   One of the first Mitzvot we are supposed to observe after breaking the fast is to begin the building of our Sukkot in observance of the holiday of Sukkot , which begins tonight.   I built mine on Tuesday and Wednesday.   The synagogue Sukkah was completed on Thursday.   What should a Sukkah look like?   My guess is that you would imagine somethin...

On Yom Kippur, we will recite the prayer known as Viddui , the great confessional of our sins, errors, and mistakes. We don't say it just once but rather, ten times during the holiday. By repeating the Viddui , both in our personal prayers as well as in the communal prayers, we acknowledge the mistakes we have made so that we might understand why we committed them, atone for them, and resolve to refrain from repeating them in the new year. The idea of confessing a sin appears in the Bible. In Numbers 5:6-7 we read: “A man or woman who does a sin toward a person, thus breaking faith with God, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess the wrong that he has done.” It’s place in the Yom Kippur service is codified in the Mishnah .     As we read the Viddui carefully, we become aware that so many of the sins we confess were the result of irresponsible words. Simply put, we have engaged in far too much lashon hara , evil, slanderous, and harmful speech which d...