Rings of the Year : Rosh Hashanah Rabbi Beth Naditch
This is the way the chagim are supposed to work : During Elul , we spend a month engaged in cheshbon ha-nefesh , a serious self-examination in which we review our previous year and prepare for the one ahead . We sound the shofar each morning , with its notes of wholeness and brokenness , hoping to shatter our complacency .
The shofar offers us a literal and figurative wake-up call for the soul . Rosh Hashanah , pregnant with possibility , celebrates the birth of our new year and of our world . We welcome this newness with the sweetness of honey and symbolism of foods which give flavor to our expectations . As we move into Yom Kippur , we experience a deepening of looking at how we live in the world . We try on the solemnness of judgment , safely flirting with ceding our illusions of control over to the Divine , all the while assuming that when we arrive in the joy of Sukkot , the trepidations of Yom Kippur will be but a distant memory . We have the release of Simchat Torah , having achieved completion and beginning , and dance with a sense of liberation , ready to begin living into a brand-new time , ready to write the story of this new year on fresh pages .
This year , we need no dedicated month of cheshbon ha-nefesh , as we have been taking stock constantly for hours , then days , then months , then somehow , a whole year . This year , we need no wake-up call from the shofar . Any complacency or contentedness we might have
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