Tag: Kol Nidrei

You know, it’s amazing. Here we stand before the Heavenly Judge, asking for a year of health for our families and for the nation plus everything else good. That’s what judgment day is for all of us. The unique text of the liturgy for the High Holy Days begins with the daily Ata Kadosh – You are holy…and “holy ones [that’s us] praise you daily.”

It was Yom Kippur eve. The shul began filling rapidly as the time approached for Kol Nidrei. Herzl Machlis sat in his seat, cloaked in his tallis and kittel, quietly reciting Tefillah Zakkah, composed by the Chayei Adam 150 years ago.

One cold December evening, I walked into my father’s book-lined study to light the Chanukah candles, which were placed beside the window that overlooked a high street in North London.

Seven hundred years ago in a synagogue in southwest Germany near the Rhine River, the chazzan opened a new machzor on Yom Kippur as he began Kol Nidrei. The congregation glanced up and gasped as they saw the new prayer book he was davening from. A freshly written large-scale parchment book presented itself to them, specially made for the bimah, to be used on all the holidays, resplendent with brightly colored illuminations and richly adorned with gold-leaf and precious lapis lazuli decorations.

My talk was called "Divine Whispers." I would be sharing an array of stories, weaving them together to create a message of how even in the "ordinary" events of our lives, we can find a "divine whisper"-a lesson specially scripted for us. The talk was the highlight of a lovely afternoon and evening program arranged by Chabad emissary Chana Alta Mangel in Blue Ash, Ohio. The food, decor, workshops and program, like Chana Alta herself, were fabulous, offering a perfect balance of beautiful physical and spiritual nourishment.