Yamim Noraim:

Shiloh Musings on the different meanings of the shofar sounds, through the lens of the disengagement.

Barefoot Jewess on doing teshuvah. Her rabbi tells her it's all in the follow-through. An honest, transparent accounting most of us can relate to.

Mirty on doing teshuvah, reflecting back not just on the past year, but on the shape of her life. (The kind of post I would write if I wasn't using my real name.)

NY's Funniest Rabbi's childhood memories of slichot. (This was the first year I've davened slichot where I actually knew what I was doing, because I knew that the same guy was leading it and I could look up most of the prayers and piyyutim beforehand.)

A Simple Jew asks his boss to let him take off for the High Holidays, which are all on weekdays this year. He says in the comments:

My boss is a devout Christian, so there was no way he could say no. Since it was too complicated to explain everything in person, I just put it all in an e-mail so he could look through all the material before he asked me questions. Luckily, most of his questions were just questions out of curiousity. I think he respects the fact that I take religion seriously, as he does.

On the Fringe highlights a brief but relevant phrase from the Yom Kippur liturgy: "May it be Your will . . . that their homes not become their graves"—For the victims of Hurricane Katrina"

This isn't really a Yamim Noraim post, but it's also about Katrina: Psychotoddler marvels at the topicality of a haftarah, and wrote a song about it, which you can listen to here.
He also went to a wedding that got very wet, but that just gave the ceremony more kavanna.

Everything else:

Shira Salomone davens at the Kotel. As we say every day this month: "Shivti B'veyt Adonai . . . "

Rick Richman casts a critical eye at the new American ambassador to Israel, who admits he knows nothing about Israel, but is proud of his Arabic. (I hope he uses it to chat at length with Mizrachi Israelis.)

Velveteen Rabbi recently entered a chaplaincy training program, and writes about the works of doctor and poet Richard Berlin.

Cosmic X posts a Letter From A Female Officer To The Family That She Evicted From Their Home In Gush Katif.

Pillage Idiot defends evangelical Christians while asking, "Are Jews, like, doomed?" He concludes that it's up to us.

SeranDez analyzes Sharon's speech to the UN and Sharon's disengagement strategy. (I wrote about this in August. There's a risk it may not work, if the rest of the world prefers to appease and scapegoat.)

In Ze'ev's shul, the prayers for the State of Israel and the IDF have been slightly revised. His views of the security fence:

A fence doesn’t stop terror, it only causes the terrorists to come up with new and improved ways to strike at the Jewish State. Furthermore, when the fence is built (more or less) along the "Green Line", who is the winner and who is the loser? If the security fence is truly meant to keep terrorists out, then build it around Ramallah, Jenin, Qalkilyah and every other Arab occupied city and village from where the terrorists originate. Don't build the fence around the Jewish cities and force us to live in a ghetto while telling us that it is for our own good.

(Can I make an editorial comment? The fence has dramatically reduced the number of successful suicide bombings within Israel.)

Biur Chametz is taking a look at road accidents in Israel, and debunks another myth. (He's got lots of bar graphs which drive the point home.)

Daled Amos rounds up some recent comments on the Shoah, in which the Muslim world comes out looking better than France.

Doubting Thomas fisks another Thomas Friedman column and concludes:

Thomas is effectively a member of Peace Now. . . . there will only be peace when Israel satisfies Palestinian territorial demands, "settlements," not Palestinian rejectionism are the main obstacle to peace, and the Jewish historical connection to the land of Israeli is irrelevant.

I bring up that last point because that's perhaps Thomas's most significant flaw. He may be able to say that supporters of "settlements" are beyond the pale, but he doesn't recognize that his own position is too. If you polled Israelis about the importance of the Jewish historical connection to the land of Israel, I would guess that not more than 20% of those polled would say that it wasn't. But among those 20% (and probably less) are most of the Israelis that Thomas hangs out with. So to him that's mainstream; but he's fooling himself. Hopefully he doesn't fool anyone else.

Soccer Dad on how not to remember 9-11.