Dramatically shorter worship services. No sermons. Huge outdoor tents. Excitement that technology is enlivening and making more intimate an ancient Jewish holiday. Despair that technology is sucking the life out of an ancient Jewish holiday.
The High Holidays, which begin Friday night with Rosh Hashanah, are the latest tradition to be upended by the novel coronavirus pandemic. According to the somber, introspective liturgy, this is the period when God decides who will live and who will die, when Jews are commanded to look hard at their own mortality and to make amends. It is the time of the year that draws more Jews to the synagogue than any other.
