Chavurat Hamidbar Fellowship of the Desert
The Chavurah is an egalitarian, eclectic-traditional community without a building or paid professional functionary. Our prayer leaders and Torah readers are both men and women. Our prayer books and bibles (Sim Shalom, Revised Plaut, New Machzor) are issued by various movements, and we sit mixed, family-style.
All are welcome.
Upcoming Events, Services, and Holidays:
The High Holidays — the two days of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) — are holy days within a period of liturgy and customs that extend from the beginning of the preceding Hebrew month of Elul through Yom Kippur . This year, the month of Elul begins on August 25; Rosh Hashanah starts at sundown on September 22 and Yom Kippur begins at sundown on October 1. The focus of this entire period is the process of teshuvah, or repentance, whereby we admit to our sins, ask for forgiveness, and resolve not to repeat the sins.
The culmination of the High Holiday period occurs during the Ten Days of Repentance, which begin on 1 Tishrei with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur. During this period, we have the chance to tip the scales of divine judgment in our favor through repentance, prayer, and tzedakah (performing righteous deeds and giving money to charitable causes).
Not only is Rosh Hashanah the Jewish New Year, which commemorates God’s creation of the world, but also the Day of Judgment, when God remembers and judges all human deeds. Except on Shabbat , services are punctuated with the call of the shofar, which according to Maimonides, is saying, “Awake, you sleepers, from your slumber…examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator.” We pray to be inscribed in the symbolic “book of life” , which is a central liturgical image of Rosh Hashanah.
Within the Ten Days of Repentance, Yom Kippur is the pinnacle of intensity, moving toward the decisive moment at its close when God is imagined as sealing the books of life and death. The day’s total focus on spiritual concerns is exemplified by fasting and abstaining from everyday activities such as bathing, sexual relations, and the wearing of leather shoes. The striving toward inner purity is also reflected in the white outfits traditional for the day.
The holiday of Yom Kippur begins with the Kol Nidre service immediately prior to sunset. The heartrending poems and prayers of the Machzor, the prayer book used for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which express the themes of repentance, human frailty, and humility before God, combine with the nusah, or musical style of the service, to express the momentousness of the day. The Yom Kippur service includes the reading of the Book of Jonah. The day closes with the Neilah service, during which penitents pray before the open ark, with one last chance to repent before the book of life is sealed. The very name of the service, Neilah (locking), refers to the imagery that the gates of repentance, open during the High Holidays, are now shutting. A lengthy sounding of the shofar, called a tekiah gedolah, releases us back into the realm of the everyday bolstered by a final echo of the call to repentance.
Adapted from www.myjewishlearning.com