cover image Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days: A Guided Journal

Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days: A Guided Journal

Kerry M. Olitzky. Jewish Publication Society of America, $15.95 (100pp) ISBN 978-0-8276-0578-7

To pave the way for the High Holy Days, which herald repentance and renewal, Jewish tradition encourages 40 days of introspection and self-reflection. Olitzky and Sabath, both Reform rabbis, guide readers through this process of taking moral inventory. They outline 40 steps to repentance, each consisting of a page of reflections drawn from biblical, rabbinic, medieval and contemporary sources. The facing page is blank, except for a meditation meant to trigger individual responses. Though the meditations often sound hackneyed (""healing begins when we acknowledge we are broken""; ""At the end of the year we find a new beginning""), they contain kernels of truth that could transcend triteness if readers truly take their messages to heart. (June)