High Holidays
Sep. 25th, 2005 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerRosh Hashanah, the Birthday of the World, begins next Tuesday at sundown, ushering in the 10 Days of Awe, the opportunity Jews have to take stock of life, pay off old debts, give charity, ask - and offer! - forgiveness, culminating in the fast of Yom Kippur. In 1992 I created a one-hour radio special called The Door Is Opened: a Jewish High Holiday Meditation on Friendship, Family and Forgiveness, which to me are the pillars of the holiday, following the spiritual exercise of those days. It was the genesis of my national public radio series Sound & Spirit (which launched in 1996), and at one point we folded it into the series.
It will be rebroadcast this week on all S&S stations - if you're within range of Boston's WGBH 89.7fm you can hear it tonight at 5 p.m. (or online at www.wgbh.org) - but you can also listen on demand no matter where you are, and pass the link on to others.
Of all the radio work I've done, this to me is the best and most true - I've always felt my entire career in radio was worth it for this. I try to listen to it every year; it's a snapshot of who I was back then, and a litmus for where I am now.
Next week's show, Fathers and Sons (with contributions by Bob Dylan, Benjamin Britten et al), is a penetrating look at the Sacrifice of Isaac story, (read each year on Rosh Hashanah), and the following week we rebroadcast Jonah, one of our most popular shows, in which I read the whole book aloud (as we do in the synagogue on Yom Kippur) and Rabbi Harold Kushner (no relation) delivers his famous dictum, "Those who think the Book of Jonah is about a man being swallowed by a whale are confusing it with Walt Disney's Pinocchio!"
Happy Holidays, everyone!
It will be rebroadcast this week on all S&S stations - if you're within range of Boston's WGBH 89.7fm you can hear it tonight at 5 p.m. (or online at www.wgbh.org) - but you can also listen on demand no matter where you are, and pass the link on to others.
Of all the radio work I've done, this to me is the best and most true - I've always felt my entire career in radio was worth it for this. I try to listen to it every year; it's a snapshot of who I was back then, and a litmus for where I am now.
Next week's show, Fathers and Sons (with contributions by Bob Dylan, Benjamin Britten et al), is a penetrating look at the Sacrifice of Isaac story, (read each year on Rosh Hashanah), and the following week we rebroadcast Jonah, one of our most popular shows, in which I read the whole book aloud (as we do in the synagogue on Yom Kippur) and Rabbi Harold Kushner (no relation) delivers his famous dictum, "Those who think the Book of Jonah is about a man being swallowed by a whale are confusing it with Walt Disney's Pinocchio!"
Happy Holidays, everyone!