Sh'ma on Vulnerability and the High Holidays

The month of Elul is designed in the Jewish calendar to help prepare us for the transition from the old year to the new one. It’s a period of in-betweenness, a liminal time that invites openness; indeed that urges us to open ourselves to vulnerability. This issue of Sh’ma explores just that vulnerability — a theme that seems especially pertinent now, faced as so many of us are with a financial vulnerability unlike any we’ve faced in this country since the 1930s. This issue also features a series of articles examining when rituals help — or, for that matter, fail to help — us in confronting vulnerability, specifically how fasting, such a prominent feature of the this festival season, sharpens or dulls the senses.