What does it mean to enter a new year when so much of the future feels beyond your control?

Published for the High Holidays of 5781, Kol Tikva: Hear Our Voices brings together reflections from Jewish individuals experiencing infertility alongside perspectives from mental health professionals and members of the Yesh Tikva community.

Written during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection explores uncertainty on multiple levels: disrupted plans, an unpredictable world, fertility treatment, waiting, prayer, and the complicated work of hoping for something you cannot make happen on your own.

Across these pages, contributors write about gratitude and jealousy, relinquishing control, preparing emotionally for the holidays, the pain of watching others move forward, and returning to Rosh Hashanah with prayers that remain unanswered. The collection also offers guidance for family and friends who want to make holiday gatherings more emotionally inclusive.

Although this edition reflects a particular moment in time, the questions within it remain deeply familiar to many experiencing infertility: How do I hold hope when I do not know what comes next? What am I allowed to feel? And how do I enter another new year carrying both gratitude for what I have and longing for what I am still waiting for?

What You’ll Find Inside

• Personal reflections on infertility during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
• Perspectives on hope, uncertainty, waiting, and loss of control
• Reflections on gratitude, jealousy, faith, and complicated feelings during the Yamim Noraim
• Practical ideas for preparing emotionally for the High Holidays
• Jewish perspectives on prayer, longing, and hope
• Guidance for family and friends on reaching out with sensitivity
• Suggestions for creating holiday gatherings where people without children can feel more fully included

A Note on This Edition

This collection was originally published for the High Holidays of 5781 (2020), during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some reflections speak directly to that period of isolation and uncertainty. We continue to share them because the deeper experiences explored here — waiting, lack of control, complicated hope, belonging, and entering a new year without knowing what it will bring — remain relevant far beyond that moment.

There Is Room for More Than One Feeling

You can be grateful and grieving. Hopeful and exhausted. Connected to your faith and full of questions. You can enter a new year wanting desperately to believe that things will change while also protecting yourself from another disappointment.

The High Holidays do not require you to choose one feeling and leave the others behind.

Hear Their Voices

Read reflections from people who entered the High Holidays carrying infertility, uncertainty, prayer, and hope — and consider what their experiences can teach all of us about making Jewish spaces more compassionate.