Tifereth Israel

09/04/2026

MAZEL TOV to parents Amy and Jason Judd, siblings Samson and Sigal, and grandparents Gayle and Melvyn (z"I) Silver, and Rosalind and Gary Judd on the B Mitzvah of Mila Rae Judd this Shabbat!!

09/04/2026

There is a word in the weekday Amidah which catches my attention regularly, and seems especially meaningful as the new year of 5787 is almost upon us.

In our silent weekday prayer, there is a prayer for justice, one of the most important things we are taught to seek in the world around us. And in the text of the prayer, we are taught to ask God to “remove from us Yagon v’Anachah,” translated in our books as “sorrow and anguish.”

Sorrow is a good translation for Yagon, but Anachah is more accurately translated as “sighing.” Sometimes, when we think of all the challenges in the world around us, we are tempted to sigh, to shrug our shoulders, to feel a measure of helplessness. (And this prayer was written about 2000 years ago!)

But, as the prayer tries to teach us, we shouldn’t sigh. We want the sighing and shrugging to end. How to do that is the challenge.

We live in a complicated world, and in our time, as unfortunately in many eras of Jewish history, it is tempting to look at the world around us with despair. So many things don’t seem to be what they should be, and so much seems all but beyond repair. Yet giving up can’t be an option.

How do we remove “sorrow and sighing” in our time? The challenge is the same as it has always been: to involve ourselves in our community and beyond our community, in social action, in politics, in speaking forcefully about what we believe and generously supporting causes about which we care. Despair is not an option. Effort is needed, and indeed it is required. The year ahead will give us many opportunities to be involved, if we will only take them.

The year ahead will be a year of decisions and challenges, in America and in Israel. We are taught to be participants and not observers. Not to sigh, but to work for change and to take every opportunity to be involved and connected. No one said it would be easy.

Beth and I wish you and your family a good and healthy year. May it be a year in which we all work together to make our community and our world something better than they might otherwise be.

Shanah Tovah,
Rabbi Harold Berman

09/02/2026

As the Jewish holidays approach, I find myself thinking about the traditions that make this time of year so meaningful. For me, the very best part of the Chagim is celebrating with family. Our three daughters are now grown and living in three different cities, but as summer comes to an end, the texts and emails begin arriving: requests for their favorite holiday recipes. I have been making many of these same recipes since they were little girls, with only a few tweaks along the way. I may try a new apple cake recipe from time to time, but I have learned not to make too many significant changes to the dishes that have become part of our family’s holiday traditions!

There is something incredibly special about gathering around the table and sharing the foods, stories, and traditions that have connected our family over the years. I also love going to shul as a family. One of my greatest joys is listening to my daughters recite the prayers and realizing how proud I am of the women they have become. Seeing that their Jewish literacy and Jewish identities remain strong and meaningful to them is a gift I never take for granted.

As Head of Columbus Jewish Day School, I find that these moments also remind me why the work we do each day is so important. At CJDS, we help raise bright, young, and inquisitive children who are developing a strong foundation in Jewish learning, identity, and community. Our hope is that they will grow into adults who, like my own daughters, are Jewishly literate, confident, proud of who they are, and deeply connected to their Jewish heritage and traditions.

The Chagim remind me that while our children grow up and build lives of their own, the values, knowledge, and traditions we share can continue to connect us—across cities, across generations, and through every stage of life. For me, that is what makes the Jewish holidays so special.

Shanah Tovah!
Susan Siegel

09/02/2026

09/01/2026

Wow! What an amazing first day of Religious School at the new Sam Baker Aquatics Complex at the JCC Columbus! 🌊📚

We had such a fun morning getting to know one another, learning Torah with Rabbis Hillel and Max, and, of course, making a splash in the pool! It was the perfect way to kick off a new school year - we’re already swimming with excitement for all that’s ahead!

08/31/2026

Rosh Hashanah is early this year. It’s the kind of Rosh Hashanah that catches you by surprise, coming before you’re quite ready. While it’s still so warm outside that you arrive at synagogue sweaty, in clothes meant for cooler fall weather, clothes that matched the picture in your mind of when Rosh Hashanah was supposed to be.

Peaches and honey weather. When the holidays fall early in September, the supermarkets still have their summer peaches. One Rosh Hashanah, many years ago, my grandmother served us peaches and honey because, she thought, why not? And ever after, my holiday felt incomplete with just apples and honey.

So much of the High Holidays are about timing and taking stock. Our tradition teaches us that God is taking account of our year, but so are we. We are reflecting back on the year just behind us and looking forward to the year ahead. And yes, our powerful and sobering liturgy forces us to confront the idea that some of us will live and some will die, some of us will have a prosperous year, and some of us will face difficulties.

Our liturgy also tells us that the High Holidays are a time for remembering. We remember, of course, our loved ones who are no longer with us, but it’s also a time to think back to other High Holiday seasons long gone. A season of memory. To see ourselves as children in the synagogue, straining to find our parents in the sea of grown-up legs, or snuggling next to our father and braiding his tallit. Sitting atop a phone book at a table at our grandparents’ house so that we can reach our plate of brisket and challah, wearing new clothes, our shiny shoes with a crisscross of masking tape on the bottoms so we won’t slip.

To remember ourselves newly married and excited for what lies ahead, or carrying our sweet babies to a holiday dinner, and seeing it once again through a child’s eyes, initiating another generation into the rhythms and cycles of Jewish time.

Where is each of us in time right now, and where have we been? What have we done? Who have we been?

It’s all about the timing. Because actually, according to our lunar calendar, Rosh Hashanah isn’t early this year. It’s right on time. And ready or not, we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be: here, beginning again.

I can’t wait to meet all of you very soon and share the High Holidays with you!. In the meantime, I wish you warm weather and the sweetness of apples, peaches, and honey as we enter this most holy and contemplative season of the year.

Shanah tovah!
Cantor Roseanne Benjamin

08/28/2026

MAZAL TOV to parents Lindsay and Julian Goodman, brother Jonah, and grandparents Lisa
and William Bendler and Judith and Roy (z"I) Goodman on the Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat of
Tessa Rose Goodman!!!

08/28/2026

In case you missed it, the title of this post is different from our standard “A Thought Before Shabbat” weekly emails. In yet another sign that the new year is fast approaching, we have begun “A Thought Before the High Holidays,” as this is the first in our annual series of pre-High Holiday reflections. Over the next couple of weeks, we are honored to share thoughts from clergy, synagogue leadership, and communal leaders. I hope that you find their messages inspiring as we head into 5787, and I offer my sincere thanks to our contributors for their inspiring words.

For our High Holiday theme this year we have chosen the phrase “L’olam Va’ed” which means “Forever and Ever”. Most of us recognize this phrase from its sacred place at the end of Aleinu, when we are gathered back from a final moment of quiet prayer with the words “Kakatuv B’Toratecha, Adonai Yimloch L’olam Va’ed/As is written in Your Torah, Adonai will reign forever and ever.” Where does it come from in the Torah? From the end of the Song of the Sea (Exodus 5:18). In the moment of ultimate victory over the Egyptians, when it seems for that one shining second that all the problems of the Israelites are solved, the declaration is simple. “Adonai will reign forever and ever.” In other words, our lives are great, everything is amazing, and it will always feel as perfect as it does right now.

Of course we all know that things are never that easy. Even in our moments of greatest achievement, the joy we feel can be all too fleeting. The Israelites themselves, who had been slaves for hundreds of years and were finally free, bemoan the lack of water in the desert just a few verses later. As they are crying out to Moses and God in the midst of their thirst, the phrase “Adonai Yimloch L’olam Va’ed” was probably the furthest thing from their minds. For us as well, when we switch at breakneck speed from a moment of unspeakable happiness to intense frustration, we also lose the part of us that would be so inspired to shout out loud “Adonai Yimloch L’olam Va’ed.”

Thankfully, the High Holidays do not allow us to leave that part of our lives behind by making God’s eternal sovereignty a recurring refrain of the liturgy. It is a consistent reminder throughout Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur that, although our world is far from perfect and, goodness knows, not every moment of our individual lives is perfect, we must always strive to hold on to those moments that inspire us to shout out with the same glee our ancestors did. May the new year that will soon begin bring us all good health, happiness, and joy that we can cherish “L’olam Va’ed - Forever and Ever”.

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and an early Shanah Tovah,
Rabbi Hillel Skolnik

08/25/2026

Perek Yomi; Judges 4/5 and onward

08/21/2026

If you’ve read almost anything coming out of Tifereth Israel lately, you’ve probably heard that the High Holidays are the busiest time of the year around here. Behind the scenes, there are timelines and spreadsheets, programs and mailings, graphics and emails, and, in my case, one very meticulously maintained High Holiday timeline that helps keep all of us on track.

As the days pass by, the items on my timeline get checked off one by one. This week, one has taken up much of my attention: the Yizkor Book.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been helping congregants make sure their Yizkor listings are correct. This week has been spent assembling, cross-checking, editing, and re-editing the book itself. More than 3,700 names need to be checked and placed correctly. This task is not simply administrative.

Throughout the year, I am often the person who sends our death notices to the congregation. There is always a moment before I hit “send” when I am especially aware of what that email means. A family is already grieving, and friends and loved ones may already know. But once I click that button, the news travels through our community. Someone recognizes the name. Someone realizes they need to make a phone call. Someone remembers a conversation, a shared meal, or a seat in the sanctuary. A death that belonged to a smaller circle suddenly becomes a loss our community shares.

And then, we remember. We say Kaddish. We observe a yahrzeit. A name enters our records and, eventually, our Yizkor Book.

Perhaps that is why, when I work my way through those thousands of names, I have developed a habit of trying to actually notice each one. Even if only for a second, I try to recognize that every name belonged to a person.

Tifereth Israel has been part of this community for more than 120 years, and some of the yahrzeits in our records go back generations. As I work through them, I wonder about the people behind the names. Who were they? Who once opened a Yizkor Book specifically looking for them? Is there still someone who says Kaddish for them? Someone who sees their name and immediately remembers their face, their voice, or a story about them?

During the High Holidays, hundreds of people will open our Yizkor Book looking for particular names. They will find parents and grandparents, spouses, siblings, children, and friends. Those names hold entire lives and relationships that cannot possibly fit on a printed page.

But there will also be names no one is looking for anymore. People whose families have moved away or passed on, whose stories may have faded over generations, whose names could easily become just another entry in a database. Those are the names I find myself thinking about most.

I may not know their stories, what they cared about, or who once loved them. But for the brief moment their name is in front of me, I can notice them. I can remember that this was a person who lived and mattered to someone, and whose name has been entrusted to our community to carry forward.

More than 3,700 names begin to feel less like 3,700 records and more like 3,700 people.

Maybe that is part of what Yizkor asks of us.

A death notice marks a moment when a community begins to carry a loss together. Yizkor reminds us that our responsibility to remember does not end when the emails stop, the shiva chairs are put away, or even when the people who knew someone personally are no longer here. We cannot preserve every story or personally know every person whose name has been passed down through generations.

But we can continue to say their names.

After nearly a decade of creating these books, I still can’t bring myself to treat them as just names on a page.

I hope I never do.

Shabbat Shalom,
Amanda Cohen