Beyond the Sermon: What High Holiday Prayers Offer and Demand
Part of our High Holiday Webinar Series, “Standing Together: Prayer, Presence, and the Power of Community”
Monday, September 8, 2025
1:00–2:00 p.m. ET
Online
With Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts, JTS
We begin our High Holiday webinar series with guidance for how to engage more meaningfully in the prayer part of High Holiday services. Famously long and repetitive, services on these days may sometimes feel overwhelming, boring, or even alienating.
In this session, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts at JTS, offers practical strategies for participating more fully, and insight into what these services really ask of us and what they offer—especially in tumultuous uncertain times. Along the way, Rabbi Uhrbach will share some of her favorite passages in the Conservative Movement’s Machzor Lev Shalem, for which she was a member of the Editorial Committee. Whether you’re a seasoned prayergoer or showing up with hesitation, this session will help you begin the High Holiday season with openness, intention, and agency.
If you have previously registered for another session in this series, your registration admits you to all sessions in the series, and you may attend as many as you’d like.
The Zoom link for all sessions in the What’s Next? New Ways of Engaging Jewish Sources series will be in the confirmation email that you receive after you register.
About the Series
Mondays, September 8, 15, 29, 2025
1:00–2:00 p.m. ET
The High Holidays invite us into a season of profound reflection—not only on who we are as individuals, but on how we show up for one another and the world. This three-part webinar series explores the emotional and spiritual heart of this sacred time, focusing on the themes of vulnerability, responsibility, and connection.
Together, we’ll consider what it means to pray with presence, to engage meaningfully with others—even across difference—and to see these days not just as a personal journey, but as a call to collective transformation. Whether you are returning to familiar rituals or seeking a new way in, this series offers space to reflect, connect, and prepare with intention.
