You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Celebrate Rosh Hashana
You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Celebrate Rosh Hashana
Everything about September — the season change, the sweater weather, the new school year — feels like a new beginning, though a wise friend pointed out to me
that September is actually the time when everything in nature begins the process of dying.
There’s also my personal favorite, the fish head, a culinary pun, since Rosh Hashana literally means the head of the year.
As Louis C. K. pointed out in a recent bit, “The Christians won everything.” Exhibit A: “What year is it according to the entire human race?” Rosh Hashana is a reminder
that there is a radically different way of keeping time.
Many of us eat “new fruits” — New York City groceries stock up on lychees
and star fruits and pomegranates in anticipation — to, yes, celebrate the newness of the year.
That process is called “heshbon hanefesh,” literally an “accounting of the soul.”
The stocktaking requires serious reflection on the past year, which is why Rosh
Hashana is also referred to as Yom Hazikaron, or the Day of Remembrance.
But fundamentally, it’s also the fact that the whole enterprise feels unnatural to me, like a mulligan for the real new year.
This is the essence of Judaism — a religion focused on this life, rather than the next, on this world rather than the world to come
Everything about September — the season change, the sweater weather, the new school year — feels like a new beginning, though a wise friend pointed out to me
that September is actually the time when everything in nature begins the process of dying.
There’s also my personal favorite, the fish head, a culinary pun, since Rosh Hashana literally means the head of the year.
As Louis C. K. pointed out in a recent bit, “The Christians won everything.” Exhibit A: “What year is it according to the entire human race?” Rosh Hashana is a reminder
that there is a radically different way of keeping time.
Many of us eat “new fruits” — New York City groceries stock up on lychees
and star fruits and pomegranates in anticipation — to, yes, celebrate the newness of the year.
That process is called “heshbon hanefesh,” literally an “accounting of the soul.”
The stocktaking requires serious reflection on the past year, which is why Rosh
Hashana is also referred to as Yom Hazikaron, or the Day of Remembrance.
But fundamentally, it’s also the fact that the whole enterprise feels unnatural to me, like a mulligan for the real new year.
This is the essence of Judaism — a religion focused on this life, rather than the next, on this world rather than the world to come