For many Jews, the Days of Awe are the one time of year to experience prayer services. An essential part of those services is the weekday Amidah, a prayer said standing, punctuated by silence and ...

Unlike the weekday Amidah, which contains nineteen blessings, the Amidah for Shabbat contains only seven. Why seven? The Talmud (Berachot 29a) explains that these seven blessings correspond to the ...

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable before You, O Lord - my Rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalms 19:15) We add this verse to the end of the Amidah, the central prayer ...

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One of my favorite High Holidays prayers is the U-v’khein, several paragraphs added to the Amidah, especially for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Amidah, said while standing (Amidah means standing ...

Answer: The Mishna Berura (Orach Chayyim 123 s.k. 2) notes that we read in the Beit Yosef (Rabbi Yosef Caro’s commentary to the Tur) (ad loc.) numerous reasons for taking three steps backward at the ...

Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its ...

Yaakov Amos had just finished calling silently on God to “grant peace everywhere, goodness and blessing; grace, loving kindness and mercy to us and unto all Israel, Your people,” when two terrorists ...

"In actuality, Rosh Hashanah is not a Jewish holiday at all," said Professor of Classical Rabbinic Literature Reuven Kimelman. By that, he means that other days of Jewish observance commemorate a ...