The air is cooler, softer. There are new starts, new school supplies, new shoes and haircuts (and backpacks and socks and hair accessories). “First day of second grade!” my social media accounts proclaim. The new season blows in the the new Jewish year. Lots of firsts.
Fall has always been my favorite season. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot are approaching and with them the air whispers: “They’re coming…it’s time to start thinking and introspecting.” It’s both sobering and empowering to take a review of the past year and refresh our commitments for the new one.
How have I done this year? How am I different from the me I was a year ago? What have I learned? What would I do differently? Whom do I want to be in a year? What blessings do I want G-d to give me this year? Which of my prayers from last Rosh Hashanah have already been answered?
The honey chicken and round challahs are delicious and traditional, but they are not the point. The scary prayers Who shall live and who shall die are emotional and frightening, but they, too, are not really the main point.
What is the point?
If you are alive, if you are reading this, then the first point is gratitude for the past, because a year ago you were written down for life. You were granted another year, with which to do whatever you wished. This past year I ziplined in Vermont, helped start a new school, saw my son move out into his own place, traveled to Israel, tried and quit guitar, forgave myself for many things, cried, hugged, laughed and loved. So much blessing!
The second point is gratitude for this moment. That we have the gift of Rosh Hashanah, the gift to talk to G-d, Who only wants what’s best for us, to ask for all the things that are dear to our hearts, is enormous. This is our audience with Management to plea for health, for financial help, for clarity, for bravery. For the fortitude to handle difficult relationships and sometimes the strength to leave them. For forgiveness toward ourselves and others. For the eyes to appreciate all the blessings we already have. For mental stability and courage and honesty. For humbleness and strength of character. For nachas. For the ability to remember to tell people that we love them. That’s a gift. A gift from Judaism to you.
And maybe the third point is just joy. Joy that we have this holiday as a People that so many recognize as our special new national beginning. That we are excused from school, from meetings, from work, from life, even on a Monday and a Tuesday, to celebrate our New Year, because this holiday and this nation has been around for thousands of years and don’t plan on disappearing anytime soon. This pride, this national celebration, is exhilarating.
For gratitude and joy. For honey chicken and scary prayers. For Jewish pride and new beginnings. For reviewing my year and praying for my next. These are a few of my favorite things. Happy New Year, OOTOB readers. Shana Tova!
Thanks for this. “Forgave myself for many things”–that is a biggie, what a great reminder. Is it in the prayers? I don’t remember it from Reform days.
This helps me realize that “feeling forgiven” might be more important than actually “being forgiven”. Being forgiven doesn’t do much if I don’t FEEL forgiven (as in, suspecting a friend still holds a grudge despite protests that all is forgiven). I know Os get the relief of feeling God has forgiven them on Yom Kippur; as someone who is a lot less shaky on belief in God, “forgive myself” is a powerful way to get to “feeling forgiven”.
Then again, how precisely do I get there? How exactly do you forgive yourself?
I meant a lot MORE shaky.
I don’t think feeling forgiven is more important than being forgiven, since it can’t replace being forgiven. (How would you feel if someone hurt you and then said, “I don’t have to apologize to you because I already feel forgiven”?) But being forgiven certainly doesn’t make you feel better about yourself if you don’t feel forgiven. And forgiving yourself is essential to feeling forgiven. But we can’t be sure God has forgiven us unless we have changed and won’t do such things (whatever they are) again. So I don’t think the Orthodox have an easier time feeling forgiven.
Yeah, I should have said something like what you say, that BEING forgiven doesn’t mean much if I don’t FEEL forgiven.
I have more questions based on your illuminating comment:
1. Can Os feel sure God has forgiven you if you truly feel you have changed and won’t do such things again? When you feel profoundly repentant, can you feel sure you have been forgiven by God, or do you remain uncertain that you are forgiven?
2. I thought that on YK you actually can receive God’s forgiveness (and that of other people), or at least start over with something of a clean slate, without profoundly changing and giving up negative qualities or acts. Like I know I can be way too critical at times, I really am sorry, I want to change and will make an effort to do so, but I also know that it is likely it will happen again, even if not as much. Does God forgive me even in that case?
If you know you’ve changed and are convinced you won’t do these things again, you can know God will forgive you. Personally, I’m more likely to say, “Who am I kidding? I know I’ll mess up again.” I think there’s still a sense that God knows I’m trying at the moment, even though He also knows I’ll do it again (after all, He knows the future), so I hope for forgiveness on some level.
But if you truly change to the point that you aren’t the same “person” you were before (you’re now a person who doesn’t criticize unreasonably, for instance, or at least not as often), then God will not hold it against you that the person who you used to be kept criticizing.
As for receiving other people’s forgiveness on Yom Kippur, that’s up to them, although we’re supposed to forgive people, especially if they ask us to. That works all year long. You can forgive people at any time, and it’s a good thing to do. And God may treat us the way we treat others, so if you forgive others, He is likely to forgive you. I know I’m couching a lot of this in “mays” and “likelys” but that’s because I can’t speak for God or promise anything in His name. I can only discuss basic principles. If you do your best, you’re certainly better off after Yom Kippur than you were before.
Shana Tovah!
If G-d only wants what’s best for us, then why should we ask for the specifics of what we want in the New Year? To me it makes more sense to ask for faith in G-d’s wisdom. There are many, many requests to G-d that don’t get answered affirmatively; as a rabbi once said, “G-d is not a cosmic concierge.”
Kathy, I think that the process of asking God for things and acknowledging that he is the “King” (part of the Rosh Hashanah service) actually transforms us and makes us closer to Him. Then we are different people and have now earned different things. God wants us to turn to Him in times of trouble and specifically to ask Him for anything. In His wisdom He will decide, for sure, but when we change, our fortune changes as well.