High Holy Days 5786
Planted like a Tree
Beside Divided Waters
In this time of division all around us, we will engage the High Holy Days with a mind toward rooting deeper, reaching higher, and connecting with each other at root and branch levels. How can we flourish? How can we stand strong for justice, with just enough bend so as not to break? How can we delve deep to be sustained by waters that are well beyond the divided streams surrounding us? How can we weep like willows, and still flower and give fruit to this world?
This year we lean into the words of Psalm 1: Those who resist the counsel of the wicked shall be like trees planted beside waters of division – thriving, giving fruit in its season, bearing leaves that don’t fade.
Our very musical, creative, heartfelt services will include:
Evening and Morning Services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Shofar Service and Tashlikh Ritual on Rosh Hashanah Day
Justice Service, Healing Service, Yizkor Service, and Neilah Service on Yom Kippur Day
Family Services on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur mornings
Join us to welcome the High Holy Days. Our ritual is musical, creative, and unorthodox. Services will take place at Ner Shalom, and all major services will also be available on Zoom.
Schedule and Description of Services
Click a service below for details. Be sure to scroll all the way down, or click on these links. There are 5 Sections:
Opportunities to Greet the High Holy Days in the Month of Elul
Rosh Hashanah Services & Activities
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
We welcome the new year 5786 with joy and song and prayerful deepening as we sink our roots deeper. Expect melodies from around the Jewish world, words of inspiration from our rabbi, music from the Good Shabbos Band and the Ner Shalom Singers, and creative contributions from many members of our Ner Shalom community.
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In-Person Only. Registration required. Those registered for the in-person morning service may also join Leiah on site.
Join us as Leiah Bowden leads us into a state of physical and spiritual wakefulness to welcome the New Year and the sacred everyday.
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This offering is free, but you must register by clicking here.
We invite families with children to join Nitzanim to welcome the new year with song, prayer, and play, led by Reb Mia, Rabbi Irwin, Lia Goldman-Miller, Dan Foster, Alice Pennes, Lauren Broersma-Grossman, and other members of the Nitzanim faculty.
Families are invited to afterward to join the congregation for our Shofar Service.
For information on enrolling in Nitzanim for the rest of the year, click here.
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
With the guidance of Reb Irwin and our spiritual leadership and musical teams, we continue leaning into the sacredness of this day and the new year. This morning service includes High Holy Day prayers, the awe-inspiring blasts of the shofar, and an interactive engagement with Torah.
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When we finish the morning service, stick around to picnic with us. You bring your own brown-bag lunch. We will supplement with challah and beverages and apples and honey! Outdoors in the Ner Shalom Courtyard.
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Free and open to all. In person only. Meet at Ner Shalom and we will stroll together to a spot on Cotati Creek to perform our ancient tashlikh ritual of letting go of what no longer serves us.
greet the High Holy Days Through the Month of Elul
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Imagine bringing the vulnerability and supplication of the High Holy Days into your body and soul with a deep, daily practice.
This year we are taking up the Mizraḥi custom of a daily, early-morning gathering to offer penitential prayers through the month of Elul. Led by Reb Irwin and Rinat with guest leaders, we will meet every weekday at 8:30 am for 30 minutes in our special Seliḥot Zoom Room. During that time we will recite some daily seliḥot prayers, and we will lean contemplatively into one line of our beautiful piyyut, Ana B’khoach – the prayer-poem that asks for an untying of all the things that bind us. You can drop in any morning, or make it a daily practice so you can see and feel how these texts and melodies infuse your days. Each session will culminate in the blasts of the shofar.
Two special bonuses:
– On Wednesdays, those who wish may join us at the synagogue to be in communal space together for that half hour. (Zoom will still be available.)
– On Sundays at 9:15, we join together with Congregation Shir Tikvah in Minneapolis for a shared Selichot practice.
CLICK HERE to join on Sundays.
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Led By Reb Judith Goleman and Basha Hirschfeld
Buddhism teaches that the cause of suffering is attachment.
In Judaism we like our attachments. We are attached to the traditional order of prayers in the service, as well as our Grandma's recipe for chicken soup.
Join Reb Judith and Basha in a conversation discussing these different approaches to a spiritual life.
In the Zoom Classroom (see your weekly eBlast for the link).
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Led By Sheridan Gold And Sally Churgel
While the world seems to be unraveling, one way to keep whole and as sane as possible is to be conscious and intentional about how we cope with our inner world and the choices we make. When the choices don’t work as planned, when things seem to fall apart despite your best intentions, what is the way that you pick yourself up and keep forging ahead? How do you reweave your experiences with new behaviors, choices, and viewpoint?
We invite you to join us for an evening of creativity and imagery to help you illuminate these two questions and possible have an answer emerge.
In a gentle, guided, and artful way, you will make two collage cards; one will invite you to express what is currently unraveling in your life due to choice or circumstance.
The second collage will support you to create a fresh image with the unraveled parts you want to retain but in a new configuration. This method of self-discovery, if done consciously, supports you to nourish your soul in a surprising and elegant manner.
List of materials will be provided upon registration.
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Free and Open to All – Zoom Only (in the regular sanctuary Zoom Room)
Led by Reb Irwin & Friends
Selichot is one of the most beautiful rituals of our year. Not a traditional prayer service, it is an opportunity to begin the High Holy Day flow, moving as a community into a deeper place of gentleness, forgiveness, expansiveness and beauty. The service will include short teachings, meditation, some of our favorite High Holy Day songs and chants, and a blast of the shofar. About one hour, soup to nuts.
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Free and in person only.
Join us to visit the Ner Shalom section at Pleasant Hills Cemetery, honoring members of our Ner Shalom community buried there, and offering songs and prayers.
Meet at Pleasant Hills Cemetery, 1700 Pleasant Hill Road in Sebastopol. The Ner Shalom section is in the far northwest corner of the cemetery. Parking available on the gravel lane near the Ner Shalom section.
Consider bringing a folding lawn chair if you would like to sit during this visit.
Read more about the cemetery by clicking here.
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Our beloved Celebrations Program, now starting its 18th year, offers Jewish ritual, song, and celebration to kids and adults with disabilities, and their families. Find out more about Celebrations by clicking here.
Attending in Person
Congregation Ner Shalom is dedicated to creating community and ritual space that is safe. This year’s High Holy Day services will take place both in the building and online in our Zoom Sanctuary.
Your registration entitles you to attend either in person or on Zoom, as you wish.
Registrations are per person. If you are only attending on Zoom, and your whole household will be with you, there is a special Zoom Household rate.
Covid Policy
While no longer require masking, we are in a world-wide uptick of Covid right now. So we strongly encourage you to mask as a means of protecting your own health and that of vulnerable people around you.
To help us keep each other safe, we also encourage you to be mindful of your exposures in the week leading up to your attendance and to take a Covid rapid test before coming. And, of course, if you are feeling any symptoms, please keep your fellow Ner Shalomers safe by joining us on Zoom instead.
Family Experience!
For families with children through 8th grade, Ner Shalom’s Nitzanim Program is offering High Holy Days services including music, story, and activities. These will take place on the mornings of Rosh Hashanah Day and Yom Kippur Day at 9:15 am in the outdoor courtyard at Ner Shalom. These services are free, but you must register by clicking here. These services are followed by additional learning and activities. On Rosh Hashanah, families are invited to then join the congregation for Torah and Shofar Service. On Yom Kippur, families are invited to then join the congregation for “Storahtelling.” Families wishing to attend other High Holy Day services (childcare available) can register by using the registration buttons at the top and bottom of this page. To find out more, visit Nitzanim.
Yom Kippur Services & Activities
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
Led by Reb Irwin and our spiritual leadership and musical teams, this is a serious night, in which we contemplate the mark we each make on this world and on each other, and whether it is all that we would wish. We chant the Kol Nidre prayer and touch into traditional and new music from around the Jewish world.
It is customary to wear white, and to wear a tallit if you have one. If joining by Zoom, consider planning your physical space: tidy it, put out photos of loved ones or ancestors, have candles ready to light.
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Registration for Yom Kippur morning required. Not available on Zoom.
Between judgment and compassion lies the heart we tap on to awaken during Yom Kippur. Come and awaken the heart of longing and connect to Source through meditation with Basha.
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Free and open to families with young children. On site at Ner Shalom’s outdoor courtyard. Registration is required. Register by clicking here.
Led by Reb Mia, Rabbi Irwin, Lia Goldman-Miller, Dan Foster, Alice Pennes, and Lauren Broersma-Grossman, we explore Yom Kippur themes in kid-friendly ways, using song, story, and activity.
For information on Nitzanim, click here.
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
We move deeper into our practice of teshuvah, finding the path back to our hearts, repairing our relationships with self, others, and Earth. We look at how we may learn to better drop our masks in these holy relationships.
The service will include beautiful music, traditional and familiar Yom Kippur prayers, and an interactive Torah reading.
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We gather to sit in compassion and solidarity with those who are suffering in the world and those whose lives and safety have been jeopardized by the current political climate. Expect song, prayer, and silence, as we feel in deeply and recommit to our work in the world.
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
Rita Rowan and Leiah Bowden lead us in a service to breathe into the healing we need, and address it with song, mindfulness, and prayer. Don’t miss this beautiful experience.
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
Together and individually we hold and honor the memory of our beloveds who played such key roles in our lives.
Join us for memory, story, and song, led by Stephanie Brown and Sharon Ziff.
If you wish your loved ones' names to be included in our annual Yizkor list, be sure to select the Yizkor item when you register and offer us the names you want included in this year’s ritual.
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Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.
The climax of Yom Kippur, the Neilah service is our last communal opportunity to make amends, to reach new resolve, to write our intentions in the Book of Life. The service. led by Reb Irwin and our Musical Team, is followed at 7:00 PM by a short havdalah in the courtyard and a vegetarian/kosher fish break-the-fast potluck.
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After Neilah, we will make havdalah together. Then, after motzi, we will enjoy a potluck break-the-fast under the stars or in the big room, whatever your preference. (Potluck offerings should be Vegetarian / kosher fish only, and ready to serve, i.e. pre-cut.)
The In-Between Days
(Click any Service or Event above for Times and Details)
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During the days in-between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we will be leaning into the Ana B’koach prayer. Each morning you will receive an email that will focus on a different line of the prayer (Day 1, Line 1; Day 2, Line 2 etc). Included will be a link to a different melody of the prayer, a journaling prompt, and an invitation to create art. In the evening, you are invited to join Sally Churgel and Sheridan Gold on Zoom for a 30-minute check-in to see what bubbled up during the day.
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Free and open to all. On Zoom only, in the usual Ner Shalom Zoom sanctuary.
Being in the middle of the Days of Awe lends depth to everything we do, even a very simple welcoming of Shabbat. We will rest gently with each other, breathe, sing, and pray. We will notice the special additional prayer language added during these Ten Days of Awe. Expect this evening to be sweet and especially deep.
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Description here.
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Words about family shabbat in the sukkah. Registration link.
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A daytime thing? Or the night before?
Ner Shalom community members of all ages join our B.Mitzvah Academy students to celebrate Simchat Torah. We will dance with our Torah scrolls, unroll one of them around the room, peek inside, and read both ending and beginning. Come ready for a good time. In-person only.
Come One, Come All
Our services are open to all. Like most synagogues, our gathering together on High Holy Days is also how we support our community financially. If you would like to attend services and are not able to pay the full fee, there is a low/fixed-income rate available.
Some additional scholarships may also be available. Read our scholarship policy by clicking here. Full or partial scholarships must be requested at least five days prior to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.
Making a Mishkan at Home
If you will be attending some of this year’s services on Zoom, consider how you might turn your home environment into sacred space. Where you will sit, how is it lit, how will the air flow, what objects are nearby, what scents, flavors and colors? Will you gather objects from nature? Photos of ancestors? Delicious morsels to eat before or after? Set some intention so your home can be alive with holiness and be a true extension of our collective sacred sanctuary.
High Holy Day Food Drive
As the High Holidays approach, we will be remembering those in need. So we continue our Ner Shalom tradition of collecting food donations during the High Holy Days. Please bring canned and non-perishable food items to Congregation Ner Shalom to benefit the Redwood Empire Food Bank. We will be collecting items in bags in the Sanctuary throughout the High Holy Days. If you are attending services in person, you can bring your donations then. Otherwise, contact Rob in the office to make arrangements for dropoff. You can reach him at info@nershalom.org or at (707) 664-8622. Office hours are typically weekdays 10am-2pm.
Help us continue this wonderful mitzvah!