How Jews Approach the New Year

We are approaching Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year on the evening of September 11 and the days of September 12-13. What some might not know is that the Jewish community has a 7 week cycle of preparation with three significant transitions. The first was on Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, which this year was July 21-22. As Rabbi Alan Lew z”l, the former rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in San Francisco, wrote on Page 41 of his book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, “Tisha B’Av is the moment of turning, the moment when we turn away from denial and begin to face exile and alienation as they manifest themselves in our own lives—in our alienation and estrangement from God, in our alienation from ourselves and from others.” Only from a moment.

The next step in this process occurred at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul (August 13-14) when we began to blow the shofar, traditionally a ram’s horn, to wake ourselves up to this moment-determining how we want to be different in the coming year. We start apologizing to those we have wronged and taking concrete steps to change bad habits and problematic behavior.

The step where we feel the most urgency before the High Holy Days is Selichot, prayers which we recite for forgiveness for wrongdoings between us and God. This begins Saturday night September 5 for Ashkenazim (Jews from Germanic and eastern European origin-Jews from Spanish or Middle Eastern origin began on August 14). In these prayers we beseech God’s mercy, calling on God’s compassion. It is important to point out that all these prayers are for wrongdoings between God and us; wrongdoings between people require personally asking for forgiveness up to 3 times. In our sacred book the Talmud, it says “One who says I will sin and the Day of Atonement will expiate my sins will NOT achieve atonement.”

Why continue to do these practices? Many readers might not believe in God. I would imagine all those who come to my synagogue do not as well-that some come because it is tradition for them, others to reconnect with old friends and be with community, others to celebrate the Jewish New Year together. All of these reasons are valid. The reason I participate in this cycle is so that I can work on self-refinement. Human beings are always works in progress. We cannot fully control what happens to us; the one thing we CAN control is how we react. A cycle of deep introspection and self-accounting helps us determine whether we have a role to play in our life situations and whether we can be a better version of ourselves. Some things are not there to learn from-in the past weeks I participated in funerals of people taken before their times. We cannot explain why bad things happen to good people. What we CAN do is view life as a gift and a privilege and look closely at ourselves and ask “What is the best thing we can do RIGHT NOW?”

What I love about the Jewish approach is that it is step-by-step. Too often we believe in an all-or-nothing approach rather than incremental change. It’s why many of our secular new year resolutions fail after a couple weeks. Coming to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah without preparation is like running a marathon without any training-you’re bound to get hurt (physically or mentally), exhausted and leave wondering what was it all for and whether it was worth being there in the first place. Taking the steps to prepare for the Jewish New Year, or for any monumental event, is crucial to coming away feeling inspired and fulfilled.