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How can I possibly give thanks to God if I stumble on the thanks I give to the people most important to me?

Most of the rituals I found took on a tone of mourning the life that the transperson wasn’t able to have. But I wanted to create a ritual that was fully positive and celebratory.

Every day we can co-create, create the world worth living in. If we are created in God’s image, and inside the Arks of our chest dwells Divinity, we earned another shot at a new day.

This, I believe, is why the High Holidays are followed immediately by Sukkot, the Festival of Booths. Five days after we acknowledge mortality, Sukkot is a celebration of the temporary.

After almost two months of rising to the challenge of repentance and renewal, granting one another second chances for each other and ourselves, we get a second to sit down.

Is there another way to look at life and death, that isn’t through a lens of fear and trembling?

The prayers and tunes of S’lichot are meant to crack into our yearnings for all that is good, righteous and holy, and to point us toward our own errors. We’ve put stumbling blocks in front of ourselves. Realizing that we’ve knocked ourselves off our own feet, we’re called upon to see our regrets as a doorway to repentance.

For me, living in two civilizations means that they inform one another. When I blow my New Year's Eve party horn in the winter, I remember the echoes of the shofar in the fall.

A new collection of resources for the High Holidays focuses on the theme of Embracing the Stranger.

I’m thrilled to introduce Hashivenu, a new podcast that highlights resilience practices embedded in Jewish teaching and Jewish living.