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See the Full Schedule →אַתֶּם נִצָבִים הַיּוֹם — "You are standing today, all of you." Nitzavim opens with the entire nation lined up together — leaders and woodchoppers, elders and children — entering the covenant as one body. Days before Rosh Hashana, the Torah is handing us the one idea we most need walking into judgment: nobody stands outside the circle.
אַתֶּם נִצָבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְכֶם לִפְנֵי ה' אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
"You are standing today, all of you, before Hashem your G-d" (Devarim 29:9).
Nitzavim opens with Moshe gathering the entire nation — and the pasuk goes out of its way to list who's included: heads of tribes, elders, officers, "every man of Israel," children, wives, and even "the woodchopper and the water-drawer." Every rung of the ladder, from the most prominent to the most overlooked, stands in the same covenant at the same moment. Rashi notes that Moshe assembled them specifically on the day of his death, so that the closing of one era would be marked by the strongest possible statement: this Torah belongs to everybody, together.
A few pesukim later comes one of the most comforting lines in the entire Torah: teshuva "is not in the heavens, that you should say, who will go up to the heavens and get it for us... it is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it" (30:12–14). Coming back to Hashem was never meant to require a scholar's ladder or a tzaddik's climb. It's already sitting inside every single person named in that opening pasuk — the officer and the water-drawer both have equal access.
Vayeilech closes out the Torah reading with the mitzvah of Hakhel — men, women, and children gathered together to hear the king read the Torah aloud, so that "those who do not know may hear and learn." The pattern repeats: nobody is too young, too busy, or too far along to belong in the room. As Rosh Hashana approaches, it's worth asking who in our own homes might be quietly feeling like the woodchopper at the back of the line — and finding one small way this week to make sure they know they're standing right up front with everyone else.
May we all merit to stand together, ready for a good and sweet new year. 🧍
Little hacks passed down from Bubbies, neighbors, and years of trial & error. Send us yours — we'll add them to the collection.
Score the pomegranate around the middle and gently break it into sections while fully submerged in a large bowl of water. The seeds sink straight to the bottom, the bitter white pith floats up to the top so you can just skim it off, and not a single drop of juice touches your clothing or countertop. With pomegranates showing up on so many Rosh Hashana tables this year, this is the trick worth actually remembering — deseed the whole fruit in the sink in under five minutes.
Once you've deseeded a pomegranate in water (see above), spread the seeds on a paper-towel-lined tray and freeze for an hour before bagging. They stay separate instead of clumping, so you can grab a handful anytime for salads or the Yom Tov table.
Rosh Hashana honey sells out fast once Elul is in full swing. Grab a jar or two now while the shelves are full and prices are normal.
On a slow Sunday, assemble five lunch bags' worth of non-perishables (crackers, pretzels, fruit snacks) into labeled bins in the pantry. Mornings go faster when only the sandwich and fruit are left to grab.
Wet the sponge fully and microwave for one minute. It kills most of the bacteria hiding inside and makes the sponge smell fresh again — no need to toss it as often.
Store apples in the crisper drawer wrapped loosely in a paper towel rather than piled loose in a bowl. They ripen slower and stay crunchy right through the Yom Tov season.
Portion unbaked muffin or coffee cake batter into a lined tin and freeze. Bake straight from frozen (add 5-8 extra minutes) for oven-fresh Shabbos morning treats.
A dab of plain white toothpaste on a soft cloth buffs tarnish off silver in minutes. Rinse well and dry before candle lighting for a real shine.
Before measuring honey for your Rosh Hashana baking, warm the jar in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes or give it a quick zap in the microwave. It pours cleanly and you'll get every last drop out of the measuring cup.
Tuck a hard avocado into a paper bag with a banana or apple and leave it on the counter overnight. The extra ethylene gas speeds up ripening so it's ready for salads or dips the next day.
As you unpack the Rosh Hashana dishes this year, stick a small piece of painter's tape on each box listing exactly what's inside. Next year's unpacking (and next year's packing away) takes half the time.
Ideas to save your sanity on long summer afternoons and hot Shabbos weekends. Grouped by situation — pick a tab, pick an idea, and go.
Arrange 12 household items on a tray. Let everyone study it for one minute, then cover it up. Go around calling out items from memory — last one to forget wins.
Call out a food, kids race to say the correct bracha out loud. Get it right, you stay in; miss one, you sit out a round. Last one standing wins.
Everyone stands in a circle and grabs two different hands across the group. Working together (talking only, no letting go!) untangle back into one big circle.
Blow up a balloon before Shabbos starts. See how long the whole family can keep it from touching the floor — no hands allowed for the littlest ones is extra fun.
Freeze small toys in ice cube trays. Kids "excavate" them with spoons and warm water. Cools them down and buys you 45 minutes.
Give each kid a section of the sidewalk. When done, walk the whole family through the "art gallery" and give awards.
Set up out front. Real money, real customers. Kids learn making change, customer service, and marketing. Great mitzvah opportunity: donate to tzedakah.
Make a bingo card of things to find outside: red leaf, feather, three types of rocks, a bug, a puddle. Walk the block. First to bingo wins.
Chairs, cushions, hula hoops, a broomstick. Have older kids design it. Time each other. Bonus: video the runs.
Give kids paintbrushes and buckets of water. Let them "paint" the fence, the driveway, the siding. Water evaporates — endless canvas.
Old socks + markers + buttons + yarn. Kids make puppets, then perform a show for the family after supper. Curtains: a blanket over two chairs.
Kids write "menus," set the table, take orders. Serve real snacks. Amazing pretend-play. Great vocabulary building.
Sheets, chairs, cushions, flashlights. Read books inside. Serve lunch in the fort as a special treat. Instant magic.
Cut open a cereal box or shoe box. Kids glue in cardboard pieces and straws to make a marble maze. Design + engineering + hours of play.
Big plastic tub + rice or dry beans + small toys hidden inside + scoops and cups. Kids can play for an hour. Contain to one room!
Give kids 3 safe ingredients from the pantry. They "compete" to make a snack. You judge. Winner gets to pick supper for that night.
Give a muffin tin and a bowl of pom-poms, cheerios, or small blocks. Toddler "sorts" by color into the tin. 30 quiet minutes.
Two cups, one bowl of water, tray underneath. Toddler pours water back and forth. Improves fine motor. Bring towels.
Sheet of stickers + blank paper. Toddlers can peel and stick for a shockingly long time. Buy stickers in bulk on Amazon.
Homemade play-dough (flour, salt, water, food color) + cookie cutters + a rolling pin. Set them up at the table. Save the tray for next time.
Wooden spoons, plastic measuring cups, silicone spatulas, small pot. Give them their own drawer in the kitchen. Endless fascination.
Painter's tape on the floor becomes roads. Toy cars zoom around. Easy to peel up after. Endless configurations.
Nitzavim opens with the entire nation — from tribal heads down to the woodchoppers and water-drawers — standing together to enter the covenant as one body, including generations not yet born. Moshe then reassures them that if they ever stray and return, teshuva is "not in the heavens" and "not across the sea" — it's already close, "in your mouth and in your heart."
Vayeilech carries the story into Moshe's final day: he hands leadership to Yehoshua, writes the final Torah scroll, and commands the mitzvah of Hakhel — gathering the whole nation, men, women, and children, every seven years to hear the Torah read aloud, so that even those who don't yet know it can hear and learn.
לֹא בַּשָּמַיִם הִוא לֵאֹמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה לָנוּ הַּשָּמַיְמָה
"It is not in the heavens, that you should say, who will go up to the heavens and bring it to us" (Devarim 30:12). Moshe is speaking here about teshuva right before Rosh Hashana, and the message is meant to feel personal to every single person, not just the scholars: coming back to Hashem was never designed to require some impossible climb. It's already inside you — "in your mouth and in your heart, to do it."
A short thought to share at the table: nobody at the covenant in Nitzavim was too small to count, from the tribal leader down to the water-drawer. This week, going into Rosh Hashana, it's worth remembering that teshuva doesn't ask us to become someone else — it asks us to come home to who we already are, one honest step at a time.
אֵין מחִזִין אֶלָּ אַּלָּ אִם כִּן מן הַגָּּרוֹם כּן מוֹמֶֿ לֹא
With Rosh Hashana leading straight into Shabbos this year, plenty of us will be reheating soup, kugel, or chicken for a second or third meal — which makes this a good week to review the halachos of chazarah, returning food to a flame or blech on Shabbos. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 253:2) sets out the classic conditions: the fire must have a blech or other heat-diminishing covering (a hekesh), the pot must not yet have been set down on the ground (i.e. it stayed in your hand or on a counter the whole time), you must still intend to eat from it again, and the food must still be considered "warm" — meaning it never cooled down to room temperature.
The Mishna Brurah adds a further well-known stringency: chazarah is only for a pot that is fully cooked already (chason gamur). Placing a raw or undercooked food onto the blech for the first time is a Torah-level violation of Bishul, not a question of chazarah at all. Practically, this means the Yom Tov soup pot that's been simmering since before candle lighting may be moved back onto the blech after ladling out a bowl, but a pot of food that never touched the fire before Shabbos may not be placed there for the first time, however warm it may already be.
Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasa (ch. 1) also discusses the common case of an electric hotplate or urn: since it typically has no adjustable dial (or the dial is covered before Shabbos), it functions like a blech for these purposes, and the same four conditions apply. A pot that was fully removed from the blech and placed on the table or counter loses its chazarah status the moment it's set down — from that point, returning it needs its own fresh review.
Sourced from Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 253, Mishna Brurah ad loc., and Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasa. This is a general overview for learning purposes — for any specific situation, please ask your own Rav.
Borer comes right after Zoreh in the Torah's bread-making sequence: once the chaff blew away, the kernels still needed to be picked over by hand to remove small stones and debris before grinding. The defining feature of this melacha is separating a mixture of two or more different items so that one type is set apart from the rest — something we do constantly at a table full of guests, salads, and mixed leftovers.
There are three ways to violate Borer on a Torah level, and Chazal established one set of conditions that permits sorting anyway. The permitted way to separate requires all three at once: you take the food you want to eat (ochel) away from the waste (pesolet), not the other way around; you separate by hand, not with a tool like a strainer or slotted spoon designed for sorting; and you do it toward immediate use, meaning you're eating or serving it right away rather than sorting now for later. Miss any one of the three and it becomes a problem — for example, using a strainer to separate pasta from its cooking water is generally permitted since pesolet (water) is being drained through a designed opening rather than a food item being lifted out, but poskim discuss this case carefully since it can look like sorting through a tool.
Familiar Yom Tov examples: peeling a banana, orange, egg, onion, or potato is not Borer, since the peel was never edible mixed in with the fruit — it's considered its own separate layer, so peeling and immediately eating is fine. Picking the good pieces of fish out of a can while leaving bones behind, or removing seeds from a cut melon or cantaloupe, follows the same three-part rule: by hand, food from waste, for immediate use. Setting out a bowl of mixed nuts and picking out only the almonds to eat now is permitted; picking out the almonds now to save for tomorrow's kugel is not.
Sourced from Halachipedia's Borer entry as part of Halachipedia's full Index of the 39 Melachot. This is a general overview for learning purposes — for any specific situation, please ask your own Rav.
Esther Jungreis survived Bergen-Belsen as a child, watching the world she knew be destroyed — and yet she emerged not broken but determined that Am Yisrael's story would not end there. Her father, the Nitra Rav, had told her while still in the camp: "We will rebuild. Am Yisrael Chai." She carried that sentence with her for the rest of her life, and eventually built an entire movement out of it.
In 1973, at a moment when so many Jews were drifting from Torah observance, she stood up in Madison Square Garden and filled it — the first of countless "Hineni" gatherings that brought tens of thousands of unaffiliated Jews back to their heritage, one warm, unapologetic talk at a time. She never spoke down to anyone; she spoke as someone who had lost almost everything and still chose, with total conviction, to love being Jewish. Rebbetzin Jungreis went on to found the Hineni Heritage Center, write bestselling books, and mentor a generation of women toward a Yiddishkeit rooted not in guilt but in joy and dignity — a living answer, decades later, to her father's promise in the camp.
Yom Tov prep is officially underway — supper still needs to happen while you're cleaning, cooking, and getting the kids ready for the new school year. Five kosher, easy weeknight dinners, all fully kosher (no seafood, and meat and dairy are never combined in a single dish). Click through to Kosher.com for full ingredients and step-by-step instructions.
Layer marinated chicken thighs into a loaf pan, bake, then slice thin — all the flavor of shawarma off the spit with none of the equipment. Pile onto pita with your favorite toppings.
View Full Recipe →Sauteed chicken and pasta tossed together in one skillet with a light, flavorful sauce — ready in half an hour with almost nothing to clean up afterward.
View Full Recipe →Flaky salmon tossed with penne in a creamy pink rosa sauce — a restaurant-style dairy dinner that comes together faster than takeout.
View Full Recipe →Crispy chicken bites tossed in a sweet-and-spicy bang bang sauce — a gluten-free family favorite that comes together in about an hour on a weeknight.
View Full Recipe →A fun, kid-approved twist that stir-fries spaghetti with crispy fish sticks and vegetables in a savory sauce — a parve dinner that works alongside meat or dairy either way.
View Full Recipe →Rosh Hashana begins Friday night, September 11 this year — and since day one falls on Shabbos, tables will be set once for both. A low arrangement of pomegranates and apples, a gold or pomegranate-accented runner over your white Yom Tov cloth, and a dedicated honey dish go a long way. Here are a few real pieces you can order this week to dress up the table.
This year's look: a white or cream cloth as the base, a low runner of real or faux pomegranates and apples down the center, gold or brass flatware, and individual honey dishes at each place setting so no one has to pass a jar down a crowded table. Add a few low taper candles once Shabbos comes in and the whole table glows.
Stackable glass jars in gold apple-shaped acrylic plates with wooden honey sticks — everyone dips their own apple without passing one jar around the table.
Shop on Amazon →The same individual glass-and-acrylic apple dish with a wooden dipper, in a cooler silver tone for tables that lean more modern than gold.
Shop on Amazon →A budget-friendly six-pack that includes the honey dish, dipper, and matching apple-shaped plate for each place setting — an easy way to make every seat feel special.
Shop on Amazon →If you'd rather set out one shared honey dish instead of individual ones, this glossy apple-shaped dish with its own spoon looks lovely in the center of the table.
Shop on Amazon →A warmer, more rustic option than acrylic or glass — a bamboo tray with a bowl and dipper sticks, nice for a table leaning toward natural wood and neutral tones.
Shop on Amazon →Our community says Tehillim together for those who need a refuah shleima. Join the group, or submit a name for the list.
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