HeyJaredTorah Borealis
Dispatches from a student rabbi poet liturgist from the Great North, Israel, and points between.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 9
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- Sep 18, 2026
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- Jul 12, 2026
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Mom z”l, Joy in the Land, Not Ready to Rabbi (opens the original)
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Last Friday morning, erev Rosh Hashanah, after calls to both of my daughters and both of my sisters, I thought, “That’s it. No one left to call.” This is the first High Holy Days without mom, z”l. For the first time I understood in my bones that we’d never speak again. It’s not that I haven’t been through this before. Dad, z”l, died 36 years ago; Ami, z”l, 17 years ago. No one left to call. This is among the three moments from Rosh Hashanah that I’m holding this Shabbat Shuva.For the past few we
Wildly Unimaginable Blessings (opens the original)
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This is my prayer for 5787, תשפ״ז. I confess, it’s been my “go to” Rosh Hashanah prayer every year since I wrote it. The idea came as I signed an email to musician Josh Nelson. I concluded: "For a year of wildly unimaginable blessings. Your friend, Alden."Wildly Unimaginable BlessingsLet us dreamWildly unimaginable blessings…Blessings so unexpected,Blessings so beyond our hopes for this world,Blessings so unbelievable in this era,That their very exi
Half-Moon Kaddish (opens the original)
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A half-moon hung over a partly-cloudy Jerusalem sky this morning, the first hints of waning. Any Jew living secularly in the solar calendar and spiritually in the lunar calendar sees this sign in the sky as notice that the Days of Awe approach.One custom in this holy month of Elul – in this month of introspection – is to visit the graves of our deceased. To give honor. To draw strength. To learn. All that was true and good, noble and honorable, wise and loving, their Torah and their mitzvot, are
Senior Seminar: The Call (opens the original)
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When I decided to make Aliyah, I had a profound sense of knowing that my journey needed Israel. Here, I engaged in my first serious Torah study. Each of my books have been shaped by this land. I first experienced that same sense of knowing as a teen. I’d just finished telling a Hassidic tale to summer day campers when a profound sense came over me: one day I’d be a rabbi.The fall semester at Hebrew Union College has begun. Those of us slated for ordination in the spring are in a class called “Se
Forgiving God (opens the original)
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Can God be forgiven for allowing October 7th to occur? I wrote “Forgiving God” after living through October 7th and its aftermath here in Israel. It’s one of the most challenging prayer-poems in my book Enter These Gates: Meditations for the Days of Awe. After that horrific day, with hundreds of hostages in the hands of Hamas, wars in the offing, I found myself in several conversations about God’s justice and mercy. Invariably the question arose: can
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