SERVICE PLEASE Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller world-renowned Jewish women’s educator sums up the core focus of the day as the joy of crowning Hashem King over ourselves. “It’s the simchah of saying ‘I want to serve Hashem!’ ”

H ours of introspection. Impassioned recitals of Lamnatzeiach and awe-inspiring shofar blasts. Forceful exhortations to teshuvah during the critical moments before Ne’ilah. This is the stuff that the Yamim Noraim are made of and we all recognize these moments...from a hazy distant era back when we were eager students who spent hours with a Shaarei Teshuvah and lapped up shiurim in preparation for the season.

While back-to-school shopping caring for generations above and below us and putting bread on our tables are all worthy pursuits they combine to make accessing eimas hadin exponentially more difficult.

For many women the frustration is not an intellectual dissonance. They know where their place is at their current stage of life and they have no problem cleaning up spilled cereal instead of shuckling to the strains of Unesaneh Tokef. However there remains a niggling feeling of missing out on something important.

Of course women don’t have a monopoly on feeling harried and overworked. The average male head of household is likely just as torn by all his daily demands. “Men are also struggling to step out of their mundane activities. Their daf yomi shiur doesn’t necessarily give them tools to prepare for Yom Hadin ” says Rebbetzin Sarah Feldbrand longtime mechaneches and author of over a dozen books on self-improvement.

She points out that in a sense women actually have a marked advantage when it comes to breaking the cycle of rote avodah. “It’s my belief that we find teshuvah easier for we naturally communicate both with ourselves and with Hashem better and more often than men do. Our days are full of the ‘please help and thank you’ kind of tefillos.”