The High Holidays can bring some of the most meaningful moments of the Jewish year. They can also bring some of the hardest when you’re struggling to build your family.

Prayers about children and future generations, crowded family meals, children’s programming, pregnancy announcements, questions from relatives, and the expectation that a new year should feel hopeful can make an already complicated season feel especially tender.

Holding Hope, Protecting Peace During the High Holidays was created to help you prepare for those moments without asking you to pretend they aren’t hard. This free Tikva Toolkit offers practical strategies for protecting your emotional well-being, making choices about how you participate, setting boundaries, finding grounding within Jewish prayer and ritual, and making room for grief and hope to exist together.

What’s Inside

In This Toolkit, You’ll Find:

• Support for navigating synagogue services, including planning where to sit, stepping out when needed, grounding tools, and creating a personal kavanah
• Practical strategies for holiday meals, including setting boundaries, planning exits, preparing responses to difficult questions, and identifying a trusted ally
• Ways to protect yourself on social media when family photos, pregnancy announcements, and year-in-review posts become painful
• Tools for unexpected grief and complicated emotions, including making room for both sweetness and sorrow without forcing yourself to feel differently
• Jewish grounding practices and personal ritual, including prayer and opportunities to use practices such as Tashlich in ways that speak to what you are carrying
• Reflection prompts to help you explore what hurts, what you need, and what might help you feel more grounded this season
• A closing blessing for entering the Days of Awe with your longing, questions, hope, and whole self intact.

You Do Not Have to Do the Holidays the “Right” Way

You can attend the whole service or step outside. You can go to every meal or decline an invitation. You can feel hopeful about the year ahead and terrified of another year without change. You can love your community and need distance from parts of it.

There is room within Jewish life for complexity. There is room for you, too.

Who This Resource Is For

This toolkit was created for Jewish individuals and couples navigating infertility, fertility treatment, pregnancy loss, or an uncertain path to parenthood who are anticipating a complicated High Holiday season.

You do not need to be experiencing every feeling described here for this resource to be for you. Take what helps. Leave what doesn’t.

Take What You Need Into the High Holidays

You cannot plan for every difficult moment. But you can give yourself permission to think ahead about what may feel tender, what support might help, and what boundaries you may need.

Download the free toolkit and move through this season in the way that feels most sustainable for you.