Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days: a Guided Journal

This spiritual guided journal will help you prepare your heart and soul for the Jewish New Year.

To pave the way for the High Holy Days, which herald repentance and renewal, Jewish tradition encourages 40 days of introspection and self-reflection. Olitzky and Sabath, both Reform rabbis, guide readers through this process of taking moral inventory. They outline 40 steps to repentance, each consisting of a page of reflections drawn from biblical, rabbinic, medieval and contemporary sources. The facing page is blank, except for a meditation meant to trigger individual responses. Though the meditations often sound hackneyed ("healing begins when we acknowledge we are broken"; "At the end of the year we find a new beginning"), they contain kernels of truth that could transcend triteness if readers truly take their messages to heart.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In these splendid and heartfelt meditations, rabbis Olitzky and Sabath weave a colorful tapestry of repentance and renewal from the threads of Scripture and tradition. The rabbis use a passage from Psalm 27, Rabbi Jonah of Genoa's Gates of Repentance, and Moses Maimonides's Laws of Repentance as well as excerpts from teachers like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Joseph Soloveitchik to guide believers on their journeys through the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. A beautifully rendered journal that captures the spiritual core of the observances.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.