Posted on August 28, 2026 by Rabbi Noah Diamondstein
Dear friends,
We are halfway through the month of Elul, and the High Holy Days are approaching fast. The staff and lay leadership here at TBE are deep in the work of preparing what we know will be a deeply meaningful holy-day season for our community.
I want to acknowledge the realities we all face in terms of balancing school/professional responsibilities with the observance of our upcoming holidays. While some teachers/bosses are well aware of the holidays and their meanings, others have no knowledge. While some teachers/places of work are proactive in offering extensions and support for days missed for religious reasons, others are not quite so gracious.
Over many years of American Jewish life we’ve made some progress in the area of awareness, but, as a minority, we still face challenges that the majority gentile population will never face. They will never have to explain who they are and why they do what they do. Many will never have to use vacation days or excused school absence days to observe their faith traditions.
I want to implore you all: make the preparations now to take the days off anyway, and make sure your kids do the same from school. I’m saying this now with the hope that perhaps with some extra days to plan ahead and speak to teachers and bosses in advance, it will make the days off, or more precisely, the make-up work after, a little less problematic.
We need to model for our kids that the holiest days of our faith need to be observed regardless of the occasional hardships. We have an obligation to our people. And here’s the guilt trip, but a truth I believe, nonetheless. Too often, in generation after successive generation, our ancestors endured far greater hardships to live their Jewish lives than we have. Our people has survived and thrived because of the ways we have fashioned community–this is the season to double down on that commitment we have made l’dor vador.
This Shabbat and next, as part of your preparations for High Holy Day observance, we have exciting opportunities at TBE. This Shabbat, at 1 PM after Shacharit and a light Shabbat lunch, we’ll be welcoming Rabbi Leon Morris via Zoom from Jerusalem. He is one of the editors of our newly adopted High Holy Day Machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, and will be leading a study session for us on how the book was crafted and how we can get the most out of our use of them.
Next Saturday night we will join three other area shuls for S’lichot services outside on our patio, a moving, musical way to enter into the liturgy of the High Holy Days for the first time.
Wishing you a Shabbat shalom and an early Shanah tovah,
Rabbi Noah Diamondstein