We often think of the High Holidays as a celebration of family bonds — and at 92NY it’s also a celebration of creativity and play. As we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we sat down with the Bronfman Center’s Director of Jewish Family Engagement Rebecca Schoffer and our new Vice President of Jewish Education Rachel Arcus-Goldberg to talk about the communal, creative joy at the heart of our High Holiday Youth Experience and Family Services.
Rebecca, what do you think makes the High Holidays at 92NY such a special time? Why is it important to you to help lead children and families through this season?
Rebecca Schoffer: There’s a feeling of returning and of starting over — and this year particularly, a feeling of returning to each other. But the thing about our family services that I find especially meaningful is that they truly are for the entire family — they are not meant just for kids, but for the whole family. We try to create a sanctuary where kids are engaged and learning and feel a spirit of play, but we also want adults to find something meaningful for themselves in the process. Any prayers or songs that we do are expressed and experienced in a very multi-faceted way — singing, dancing, and movement, the meaning underneath the words. For any given prayer, it’s a beautiful sensory explosion of movement, visual, sound and dance. On Yom Kippur we do a puppet show of the story of Jonah that includes a huge, 10-foot inflatable whale. The kids are learning the story and singing along, but adults often come up to me and say that they learned a new wrinkle of the story that they never knew before. There are multiple layers to the experience. We have people who have been coming for years and years, but there are always new people. Old friends and new friends.
What’s important to each of you about weaving creativity into the High Holidays?
RS: Creativity is the cornerstone of this whole experience at 92NY. We’re not a synagogue, so we’re not beholden to any one kind of service. It makes our services very eclectic — I always weave “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley into the services, and other songs that aren’t explicitly part of the Jewish tradition. It’s all a creative take on what it means to connect to the holidays for modern families. And there’s a great live band.
Rachel Arcus-Goldberg: When people come to 92NY, they want to do more than to just sit and listen. Creativity lets us be engaged, and this lets us relate to the concepts of the holiday in a more fun, more visceral, more hands-on way. Its more fun for kids and families, and while it’s not really about us, it is also more fun for us. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can feel very solemn in some contexts, but there’s a lot of joy in these holidays. There’s a lot of joy in starting fresh. Let’s embrace the joy.
RS: To that point, something that’s different about our family services — a big part of the High Holidays is remembrance. Lots of synagogues ask kids to step out of the room when they say the Mourner’s Kaddish, but I always include the kids. We want to share the sweet memories of our loved ones with our kids and show them the respect of inviting them to partake in that with us. It’s very special.
Rachel, what can families expect from the High Holiday Youth Experience?
RAG: The experience that I am creating for 8-12 year-olds is focused on taking some of the ideas of the holidays and accessing them through a multi-sensory, creative approach. For Rosh Hashanah we want to hit all the senses: tasting apples and honey, blowing the shofar, telling the stories that emphasize the holiday’s most important concepts, and talking about some of the main ideas and how it relates to Rosh Hashanah. We’ll do a ripped paper midrash — setting a private intention, writing it down, and creating something out of it that kids can take home with them. On Yom Kippur, we’ll be thinking about what it means to have obligations to each other. Whether you believe in God or not, we all have obligations to our fellow humans, family, friends, and to our bigger community — or to God, however you want to understand that. Actions speak louder than words. That’s a huge part of the experience we want to emphasize this year.
Do you have a favorite High Holiday memory from when you were growing up?
RS: One of my favorite memories is tashlich.
RAG: Me too!
RS: It’s when we traditionally go to a body of water to cast off our sins in repentance. We’re doing this in a creative way at the 92NY this year, and that’s all I’ll say — we will turn this tradition into a creative practice.
RAG: I always felt like tashlich was the opportunity in my community for everyone to come together. That’s one of the things about the High Holidays that I love most. People coming together that don’t see one another during the year to really mark the occasion and refresh together. Even as a kid, I loved the idea of starting with a blank slate. It’s amazing to start fresh.
The theme of this year’s High Holidays at 92NY is “Season of Renewal.” Why is it important for families to experience renewal together during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?
RS: Look, we’re all still spiritually recovering from the last few years, whether we’re parents living with burnout or kids overcoming isolation. There’s a spiritual renaissance happening right now where people are connecting, singing together, seeing each other smile — it’s so powerful. Renewal isn’t just a theme or an idea — it’s real right now. It resonates, and we need it.
RAG: We as parents like to think that we have to be strong for kids, but this is a way for everyone to support one another together — it helps to give kids a sense of agency to build that bond with the family.
RS: We all know Rosh Hashanah is the new year, but in Judaism the new year is the birthday of the world — it’s an amazing concept for kids to latch onto. It helps us ask: what do we stand for? If it’s the world’s birthday, what gift can we give the world? The High Holidays we can feel very me-centric. But we try to ask: how can I better myself so that I can give something back to the world? That’s not just our youth services, that’s all our services. I always emphasize that little hands can do big things. Kids are never too young to learn how to be good citizens and better the world. Families will be given a chance to reflect on that. We have a lot of work to do to be vessels of action, to better a world that needs us.
Join us this year with your whole family at our High Holiday Youth Experience and Family Services.