I’ve organized my life in a paper planner for decades. Every year I’d buy a beautiful planner to manage my tasks, appointments and kids’ schedules, and every year I’d pencil in Jewish holidays and Shabbat candle-lighting times around a calendar that starts in January, smack in the middle of a Hebrew year that began the previous September.
Most planners limit Jewish holidays to Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah — and mark only the first day at that. My favorite holiday, Sukkot, is never mentioned. Counting the Omer? Celebrating the giving of the Torah on Shavuot? Not a chance. Simchat Torah? Nope.
There’s a billion-dollar industry built on aesthetic lifestyle planners, sold by the millions — but none are built with a Jewish woman in mind. There’s a particular kind of tiredness that comes from not being seen, and so I decided to create one.
Years ago, I’d made a mock-up for a Jewish weekly planner I never finished, too busy with life, work and kids. But when an ad for a five-day design challenge showed up in my news feed, my Jewish planner came to mind and something in me said it was time. By the end of the week, I’d dug out my old files and started over. I’d been circling this idea for more than a decade, between jobs and raising three babies, but only recently did I understand what I was really after: not just a place to write things down, but a tool that honored my whole identity. Something that kept me connected to Jewish life on the ordinary days, not only on Shabbat and the holidays.
I wanted the Hebrew calendar to be my foundation, not a footnote. I wanted my kids’ pickups and my deadlines to sit on the same page as Shabbat and the holidays — major and minor, each on the day it actually begins. I wanted to stop keeping separate time in my head, stop pinning a second calendar to the kitchen wall, stop writing myself into the margins. And I wanted it to hold the whole spectrum of Jewish women — cultural, secular, traditional, interfaith and everywhere in between — whether you’re well-versed or just beginning to learn.
The planner has Jewish holidays major and minor already noted within its pages for all days. Rosh Chodesh and the weekly Torah portion are also already marked. (M. Welch/Copper Mirror Press)
When it came time to name what I’d made, I thought about the copper mirrors in Parashat Vayakhel, the weekly Torah portion that covers Exodus 35:1–38:20. As the Israelites build the Mishkan, the portable tabernacle, the women bring their copper mirrors to be melted down for the washing basin to be used in the tabernacle. Those small mirrors had been used by the Israelite women in Egypt to beautify themselves for their husbands and keep children coming into the world — a symbol of hope when the men had none. The midrash, the rabbinical commentary on the Torah portion, says Moses rejected them at first as symbols of vanity, but God overrules him: “Accept them — these are more beloved to Me than all the rest.”
In other words, when the men were broken and saw no reason to hope, it was the women — with these very mirrors, with small private acts of stubborn faith — who kept our people going. Something ordinary, carried out of Egypt and used faithfully day after day, became something holy — a vessel for reflection became a vessel for renewal. I believe paper has the same power. I named my company Copper Mirror Press for those women, who understood long before I did that the small, faithful, ordinary acts are what sustain us.
It’s not about grand gestures or proclamations. It’s about small, ordinary things, done faithfully in the privacy of our own homes — even when it feels futile, even when it feels hard. And I’ve come to believe a planner, of all things, can hold that same quiet work: keeping the Jewish calendar in front of us every day, so that keeping Jewish time becomes a natural part of how we plan our lives. The Copper Mirror Weekly Planner leaves room for whatever speaks to you — the observances you already hold, the traditions you’re only curious about, the Torah portion you want to read about this week. Whatever kavanah (intention) you bring, there’s no one right way to use it. Which is precisely the point. We’ve spent our lives living between two calendars. I built this so we wouldn’t have to.
The Copper Mirror Weekly Planner — a hardcover, Hebrew-Gregorian planner running July 2026 through June 2027 — is available to order now at coppermirrorpress.com. Kveller readers receive 10% off their first order and free shipping with code KVELLER.
This is a paid post. Kveller’s editorial team had no role in its production.
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