Change & Renewal: The Essence of the Jewish Holidays, Festivals & Days of Remembrance

Best Jewish book I have read in a long time. I have been Orthodox for 23 years and it gave me a whole new perspective. Wow!

Excellent book and beautifully written. It provides a deep understanding of the Jewish festivals.

People see different significances in holidays and celebrate them differently. This applies even to religious holidays. Some look on holidays as periods of joy, others solemnity, others a time for reflection or prayer. Some take a practical or rational or historical approach to the days. Others see them in a mystical or spiritual manner, as a time for spiritual elevation. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, famed author of a brilliant commentary on the Talmuds, generally takes the latter approach as he looks at the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, Jerusalem Day, and others. Each section focusing on a holiday may have as many as eight distinct discussions on various aspects of the holiday. For example, in his first of eight discussions on Rosh Hashana, the New Year, he shows how people can awake from passivity and daily routine and renew themselves. He talks about whether people can develop faith (he says "yes," although it is not easy), how people reach their highest level ("stop worrying about the approval of" others), how does the blowing of the shofar in the synagogue service help these things (it causes people to remember many happenings associated with the shofar, such as the near sacrifice of Isaac and the coming of the messiah). In another section on Rosh Hashana he perceptively writes: "In Judaism's conception of time, the past and the events that occurred in the past did not pass away with time; they continue to exist in the present. Judaism's approach to history is not that of relating to what once was. Rather, Judaism conceives of historical events as dynamic elements that continue to operate at all times."Looking at the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, he defines it as "the day designated for drawing near to, understanding, and identifying with the sacred and the holy," when we should "dedicate the day to holiness." He analyses what is sin, what did the sages mean when they said that we should be "like God," and what does "forgiveness" and "sanctity" mean. He includes a section that is clearly mystical in nature, where he speaks about "ascending (on Yom Kippur) above the world's fundamental laws to the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself - rising toward the Ein Sof, the Infinite Being."He uses his mystical approach also when he speaks about Jerusalem Day, the day that commemorates the liberation of Jerusalem from Jordanian rule in 1967. He speaks about the "special holiness of Jerusalem." It is "the gateway to heaven," the place where "supernatural events occur," "the pupil of the eye," the "umbilical cord" of the world, the "gateway to heaven," "a city perfect in beauty," it contains "the foundation stone from which the world was created," "Rather than a day of thanksgiving and joy over the city's very existence, (it is) joy over the fact that we have merited to have in our world a point of connection with the supernal (heavenly) world."Not all of the discussions are mystical. Reflecting on the winter holiday of Hanukkah, which recalls the victory of the Jews against the Syrian Greeks in 165 BCE, he focuses in a practical manner on the similar and different worldviews of the Greeks and Judaism. He writes that "the war waged against (the Syrian Greeks was not) against the Greek language or against Greek culture as a whole." The battle was against the Greek approach of being overly tolerant. "The Jewish way, however, is in its essence intolerant." Unlike the Greeks, Jews cannot accept the idea that more than one God exists. Jews cannot have a flexible scale of values. They cannot say "This (Jewish way) is the path I follow and in which I am comfortable, but it has its limits." The holiday of Hanukkah teaches that "the Jewish essence cannot be compromised." It is not a pick and choose religion.