The High Holy Days invite us to pause, reflect, and reconnect. In this interview, Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar shares the inspiration behind her book Unfolding: A High Holy Day Companion and offers insights for approaching the season with intention, openness, and hope.
What inspired you to write Unfolding: A High Holy Day Companion?
I was commissioned by Rabbi Amy Wallk to write a daily message for her congregation for the month of Elul through the holidays. I found the practice of contemplating a daily passage both grounding and uplifting. So, I wrote Unfolding as a companion rather than a commentary. I wanted to create a book that would help us open our hearts as we consider the themes of the High Holy Day season. They are short passages we can read with a cup of coffee early morning, while we are out in nature, before we sleep at night. Whenever we can grab a moment to pause. To think. To feel. To consider.
What does “unfolding” mean to you?
This season invites us to uncover who we are meant to be beneath the distractions, fears, expectations, and disappointments that accumulate over a lifetime. We carry so much: grief, regret, uncertainty, longing. We long to carry hope and joy.
Unfolding is a lifelong spiritual practice of the cultivation of inner strength and compassion. We practice listening for the whispers of our Divine purpose and recognize the obstacles we cling to. We learn to listen to others with less judgement and fear. We learn the power of grace, chesed. We unfold into a kinder and a more compatible way of living.
The book follows the journey from Tishah B’Av through Yom Kippur. Why did you choose these beginning and end points?
The spiritual work of the High Holy Days doesn’t begin on Rosh HaShanah. It begins much earlier.
Tishah B’Av asks us to face loss, brokenness, and the ways life has unraveled. It is the day when we acknowledge that something has been shattered in the world, in our relationships, or within ourselves.
Only after we have the courage to face what is broken can we begin the slow movement toward healing. Such reflection softens our heart.
Elul offers us a full month to consider the spiritual principle of love: our concept of Divine love, how we can be more loving in our relationships. How we can be more loving to ourselves. The Song of Songs speaks of the Beloved. Elul invites us to understand what that means in our lives.
Then we are better prepared for Tishrei. To begin anew, to forgive, to accept forgiveness, to commit ourselves to a purposeful life, to live with meaning and intention.
Yom Kippur is the moment when we emerge with clearer vision, an open heart, and the courage to begin again.
The seven weeks between Tishah B’Av and Rosh HaShanah, and then the Ten Days of Awe, form one continuous spiritual journey: from devastation to possibility, from lament to hope, from fragmentation to wholeness.
If readers could carry one question, practice, or intention with them into the High Holy Day season after reading Unfolding, what would you hope it would be?
The High Holy Days are not about perfection, they are about paying attention. They invite us to notice where we have become disconnected, from God, from those we love, from our own deepest selves. We return home, back to basics so we can reconnect with ourselves.
I hope Unfolding becomes a companion, helping us to pause, breathe, listen more deeply, forgive more generously. To spend a few weeks considering our inner life and relationships. To consider curiosity over judgement, kindness over fear, determination over regret. A little more peace. A bit more joy. It’s a practice.
Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar is an author, poet, spiritual counselor, inspirational speaker, and rabbi emerita at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, IL. She is the author of Omer: A Counting, Amen: Seeking Presence with Prayer, Poetry, and Mindfulness Practice, and Unfolding: A High Holy Day Companion, all from CCAR Press.
