My Religious Experience on Rosh Hashana

For me, the Jewish holidays are much more about tradition than about halacha and prayers. When I was a kid, Rosh Hashana signified the start of fall – the most beautiful time of year in New England and my favorite “sweater and tights” weather. 

It was the holiday when we were allowed to sit in the living room (where as children we never dared enter, especially me after one unfortunate incident where I accidentally broke some glass flowers), eating honey cake that my grandmother made and watching the adults drinking slivovitz and my (non-Hungarian) grandfather trying to pretend to like it. 

The first few years after we moved to Israel, when the kids were still little enough, we would go to America for the holidays, and it was only after they started elementary school that we had to start making our own Rosh Hashana traditions. It’s definitely NOT the start of sweater and tights weather here, but there are the things that have come to symbolize this holiday for me – whether it’s meals with the same friends for years, cooking a million different things with pomegranate syrup and silan (a combination that really should be used year round!), or never remembering at which meal we eat the new fruit, there are things that are firm Rosh Hashana traditions. 

As a kid, I dreaded going to shul on Rosh Hashana. It was unbearably long and boring and let’s just say it was less than melodious. But then, the very first time I went to a different shul which must have been shortly after we got married and went to my in-laws for Rosh Hashana, I found myself missing what I was used to! Even the long, boring hours spent in shul had become part of a tradition that was ingrained in me. In all the years since, I’ve been to many different Rosh Hashana services and none have particularly spoken to me in any sort of meaningful, religious experience way. 

I’ve always felt a little bit guilty about my lack of real religious connection to the holiday. Even as a child, I remember being kind of freaked out by the part of the tefila where it lists all the ways people might die this year. I have this one vivid memory when I must have been about 8 or 9 and I was at my grandparents’ apartment in New York one winter vacation. The New York Post was on the table and an article caught my eye about a little boy named Jose Diaz who was murdered by a stray bullet. For some reason, the thought that popped into my head was that at Rosh Hashana (which clearly Jose Diaz didn’t celebrate!) it was already decided that he was going to die, and that it was going to be by gunshot. I still think about him every year when I read those particular words. 

For the last two years, we were not living in our home and Rosh Hashana looked different. I was looking forward to this year, being back at home and back in our familiar shul and community (even though I still don’t know any of the tunes they sing). Granted, my plan to go to shul was more about just being there for a bit and getting out of the house and less about the actual praying.

And then, as we were getting ready to go to shul, we realized we had no machzors…couldn’t find them anywhere and finally accepted that we must have accidentally left them behind when we moved back into our house or they are in a box somewhere that we haven’t unpacked yet. I looked in one more place, and found a small pile of very very old books that I had taken from my grandmother’s house when she passed away. In that pile, was a Rosh Hashana Machzor that belonged to my great-grandmother who I’m named after. 

I took it with me and went to shul. As I settled in my seat and tried to find the place, I was first struck by the page I randomly opened to that was the prayer for the King (Franz Josef, King of the Austro-Hungarian empire). It was published in Budapest in 1901. The pages were frayed, some were stained, and it looked like there might have been something spilled on it at some point. 

The second thing I was struck by was that the words that were being said right then and there in 2026 in Israel were the exact same words that were in this machzor that my great-grandmother used in Hungary before the Holocaust. She survived the Holocaust and eventually moved to New York with my grandparents and my dad. Maybe she also used this machzor once she was in America, I don’t know. 

But as I stood here, in our land, I felt very connected to my past and to the present. It felt like a religious experience. So many things had to happen in order for me and my family to be here today. How many of those things were determined on every Rosh Hashana for the following year? What is currently being decided for the coming year?

I’d like to believe that my great-grandmother was thrilled to see that her machzor was put to good use this year. And that using it is the birth of a brand new tradition, one that I will add to the others that have been built over the years, some that have been passed on for generations and others that are newer. 

Shana Tova and G’mar Chatima Tova – may we all be inscribed in the book of life.