You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Celebrate Rosh Hashana<br />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<br />that September is actually the time when everything in nature begins the process of dying.<br />There’s also my personal favorite, the fish head, a culinary pun, since Rosh Hashana literally means the head of the year.<br />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<br />that there is a radically different way of keeping time.<br />Many of us eat “new fruits” — New York City groceries stock up on lychees<br />and star fruits and pomegranates in anticipation — to, yes, celebrate the newness of the year.<br />That process is called “heshbon hanefesh,” literally an “accounting of the soul.”<br />The stocktaking requires serious reflection on the past year, which is why Rosh<br />Hashana is also referred to as Yom Hazikaron, or the Day of Remembrance.<br />But fundamentally, it’s also the fact that the whole enterprise feels unnatural to me, like a mulligan for the real new year.<br />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
