Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

We welcome the new year 5785 with joy and song and prayerful deepening as we begin untying our tangles. Expect melodies from around the Jewish world, words of inspiration from our rabbi, music from the Good Shabbos Band, the Ner Shalom Singers, and GZ3, and creative contributions from many members of our Ner Shalom community.

This offering is free, but you must register by clicking here.

We invite families with children to join Nitzanim to welcome the new year with song, prayer, and play, led by Reb Mia, Rabbi Irwin, Lia Goldman-Miller, Dan Foster, Alice Pennes, Lauren Broersma-Grossman, Bucky Brynjegard-Bialik, and Eliz McCoy and other members of the Nitzanim faculty.

Families are invited to afterward to join the congregation for our Shofar Service.

For information on enrolling in Nitzanim for the rest of the year, click here.

In-Person Only. Registration required. Those registered for the in-person morning service may also join Leiah on site.

Join us as Leiah Bowden leads us into a state of physical and spiritual wakefulness to welcome the New Year and the sacred everyday.

Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

With the guidance of Reb Irwin and our spiritual leadership and musical teams, we continue leaning into the sacredness of this day and the new year. This morning service includes High Holy Day prayers, the awe-inspiring blasts of the shofar, and a gentle look at the traditional Rosh Hashanah Torah reading of the Binding of Isaac, inviting thought about all the tangles that brought these figures into a shared crisis, and what was needed for them to unbind themselves.

When we finish the morning service, stick around to picnic with us. You bring your own brown-bag lunch. We will supplement with challah and beverages and apples and honey! Outdoors in the Ner Shalom Courtyard.

Free and open to all. In person only. Meet at Ner Shalom and we will stroll together to a spot on Cotati Creek to perform our ancient tashlikh ritual of letting go of what no longer serves us.

Come back from Tashlikh and sit with Reb Irwin and Rinat in the shade to sink into a beautiful piyyut by 12th Century Moroccan Rabbi Yehudah ibn Abbas. This poem, Et Sha’arei Ratzaon, retells the story of the binding of Isaac, adding spiritual dimensions to it verse by verse. It is one more chance for us to sweeten the new year together with shared study and poetic delight.

Imagine bringing the vulnerability and supplication of the High Holy Days into your body and soul with a deep, daily practice. 

This year we are taking up the Mizraḥi custom of a daily, early-morning gathering to offer penitential prayers through the month of Elul. Led by Reb Irwin and Rinat with guest leaders, we will meet every weekday at 8:30 am for 30 minutes in our special Seliḥot Zoom Room. During that time we will recite some daily seliḥot prayers, and we will lean contemplatively into one line of our beautiful piyyut, Ana B’khoach – the prayer-poem that asks for an untying of all the things that bind us. You can drop in any morning, or make it a daily practice so you can see and feel how these texts and melodies infuse your days. Each session will culminate in the blasts of the shofar.

Two special bonuses:

– On Wednesdays, those who wish may join us at the synagogue to be in communal space together for that half hour. (Zoom will still be available.)

– On Sundays at 9:15, we join together with  Congregation Shir Tikvah in Minneapolis for a shared Selichot practice.

CLICK HERE to join on Sundays. Passcode 692244.

Led By Reb Judith Goleman and Basha Hirschfeld

Buddhism teaches that the cause of suffering is attachment.

In Judaism we like our attachments.  We are attached to the traditional order of prayers in the service, as well as our Grandma's recipe for chicken soup. 

Join Reb Judith and Basha in a conversation discussing these different approaches to a spiritual life.

In the Zoom Classroom (see your weekly eBlast for the link).

Led By Sheridan Gold And Sally Churgel

Register Here.

While the world seems to be unraveling, one way to keep whole and as sane as possible is to be conscious and intentional about how we cope with our inner world and the choices we make. When the choices don’t work as planned, when things seem to fall apart despite your best intentions, what is the way that you pick yourself up and keep forging ahead? How do you reweave your experiences with new behaviors, choices, and viewpoint?

We invite you to join us for an evening of creativity and imagery to help you illuminate these two questions and possible have an answer emerge.

In a gentle, guided, and artful way, you will make two collage cards; one will invite you to express what is currently unraveling in your life due to choice or circumstance.

The second collage will support you to create a fresh image with the unraveled parts you want to retain but in a new configuration. This method of self-discovery, if done consciously, supports you to nourish your soul in a surprising and elegant manner.

List of materials will be provided upon registration.

Free and Open to All – Zoom Only (in the regular sanctuary Zoom Room)

Led by Reb Irwin & Friends

Selichot is one of the most beautiful rituals of our year. Not a traditional prayer service, it is an opportunity to begin the High Holy Day flow, moving as a community into a deeper place of gentleness, forgiveness, expansiveness and beauty. The service will include short teachings, meditation, some of our favorite High Holy Day songs and chants, and a blast of the shofar. About one hour, soup to nuts.

Free and in person only.

Join us to visit the Ner Shalom section at Pleasant Hills Cemetery, honoring members of our Ner Shalom community buried there, and offering songs and prayers.

Meet at Pleasant Hills Cemetery, 1700 Pleasant Hill Road in Sebastopol. The Ner Shalom section is in the far northwest corner of the cemetery. Parking available on the gravel lane near the Ner Shalom section.

Consider bringing a folding lawn chair if you would like to sit during this visit.

Read more about the cemetery by clicking here.

RSVP required.

Our beloved Celebrations Program, now starting its 18th year, offers Jewish ritual, song, and celebration to kids and adults with disabilities, and their families. Find out more about Celebrations by clicking here.

Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

Led by Reb Irwin and our spiritual leadership and musical teams, this is a serious night, in which we contemplate the mark we each make on this world and on each other, and whether it is all that we would wish. We chant the Kol Nidre prayer and touch into traditional and new music from around the Jewish world.

It is customary to wear white, and to wear a tallit if you have one. If joining by Zoom, consider planning your physical space: tidy it, put out photos of loved ones or ancestors, have candles ready to light.

Free and open to families with young children. On site at Ner Shalom’s outdoor courtyard. Registration is required. Register by clicking here.

Led by Reb Mia, Rabbi Irwin, Lia Goldman-Miller, Dan Foster, Alice Pennes, Lauren Broersma-Grossman, Bucky Brynjegard-Bialik, and Eliz McCoy, we explore Yom Kippur themes in kid-friendly ways, using song, story, and activity.

For information on Nitzanim, click here.

Registration for Yom Kippur morning required. Not available on Zoom.

Between judgment and compassion lies the heart we tap on to awaken during Yom Kippur. Come and awaken the heart of longing and connect to Source through meditation with Basha.

Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

We move deeper into our practice of teshuvah, finding the path back to our hearts, repairing our relationships with self, others, and Earth. We look at how we may learn to better drop our masks in these holy relationships.

The service will include beautiful music, traditional and familiar Yom Kippur prayers, and a Storahtelling presentation of the Torah portion in which Miriam the Prophet dies and Moshe strikes the rock to give the people water.

Registration Required.

We witness each other as we each hold the Torah and see what comes to us and through us. This practice promises to be quite powerful for everybody - those new to Judaism, returning to Judaism, and everybody at any point in a spiritual journey.

Concurrently in person, led by Reb Irwin, and on Zoom, led by Reb Judith Goleman.

Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

Rita Rowan and Leiah Bowden lead us in a service to breathe into the healing we need, and address it with song, mindfulness, and prayer. Don’t miss this beautiful experience.

Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

Together and individually we hold and honor the memory of our beloveds who played such key roles in our lives.

Join us for memory, story, and song, led by Stephanie Brown and Sharon Ziff.

If you wish your loved ones' names to be included in our annual Yizkor list, be sure to select the Yizkor item when you register and offer us the names you want included in this year’s ritual.

Registration Required. In person and in the High Holy Day Zoom Room.

The climax of Yom Kippur, the Neilah service is our last communal opportunity to make amends, to reach new resolve, to write our intentions in the Book of Life. The service. led by Reb Irwin and our Musical Team, is followed at 7:00 PM by a short havdalah in the courtyard and a vegetarian/kosher fish break-the-fast potluck.

At 7, those who are attending in person will go out to the Ner Shalom Courtyard to make havdalah and enjoy a potluck break-the-fast under the stars. (Vegetarian / kosher fish only.)

Our friends on Zoom will enjoy havdalah led by Gesher Calmenson, and are invited to stay in the Zoom Room to chat as they break their own fast.

During the days in-between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we will be leaning into the Ana B’koach prayer. Each morning you will receive an email that will focus on a different line of the prayer (Day 1, Line 1; Day 2, Line 2 etc). Included will be a link to a different melody of the prayer, a journaling prompt, and an invitation to create art. In the evening, you are invited to join Sally Churgel and Sheridan Gold on Zoom for a 30-minute check-in to see what bubbled up during the day.

Free and open to all. On Zoom only, in the usual Ner Shalom Zoom sanctuary.

Being in the middle of the Days of Awe lends depth to everything we do, even a very simple welcoming of Shabbat. We will rest gently with each other, breathe, sing, and pray. We will notice the special additional prayer language added during these Ten Days of Awe. Expect this evening to be sweet and especially deep.

We come together on the secular anniversary of the attack on southern Israel to remember and honor those who died and to share our grief and sadness. There will also be gentle space for feeling into all the loss that has taken place since. Together we will commit to loosening the tangles that keep our world from finding ways to live at peace.

We welcome this special Family Shabbat with a shared meal in our Sukkah, and a prayer service with the special rituals and melodies unique to Sukkot. Come dance around with us and a lulav and ethrog!

Ner Shalom community members of all ages join our B.Mitzvah Academy students to celebrate Simchat Torah. We will dance with our Torah scrolls, unroll one of them around the room, peek inside, and read both ending and beginning. Come ready for a good time. In-person only.