5784/2023
The period of the High Holy Days is our culturally mandated time for reflecting on our lives. It provides an opportunity for turning over our core values and assumptions and pondering which areas of our lives we need to develop and work on.
Each year, Kol Nefesh Masorti Synagogue offers a unique ten-day programme of learning and thinking, “Bridging the Yamim Nora’im,” during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. As a community we take a pertinent theme and explore it in depth from a variety of perspectives. Through this process we begin to allow ourselves to stop, think and re-order our priorities; to reconnect to our deepest understandings of reality. We aim to arrive at Yom Kippur having done the inner work necessary to prepare for that great day of reckoning. The themes that we choose to address over the ten days tend to be universal; Rosh HaShanah is the mythic birthday of humanity, not of the Jews.
This Year's Theme: Humility – Anavah
This year we will be exploring the theme of humility – in Hebrew anavah. For the rabbis anavah is a supreme moral, mythic and intellectual virtue; it is mentioned hundreds of times in rabbinic literature. The anav is a person who relates appropriately to the surrounding world and to the people they encounter. We will trace how the term anav starts as a description of the most downtrodden in society and ends being applied even to God. Using rabbinic sources, we will explore and reflect on how our picture of the world influences our sense of who we are and how we order our priorities.
Please join us for all or some of the shiurim this year! All sessions are stand-alone, requiring no background knowledge. We have an amazing programme which includes teachers from within our community as well as guest teachers. In addition, Rabbi Joel will be at all of the sessions, in person and on-line, ensuring that there is a constant conceptual ‘shape’ to our ten days of learning. Full details are here.