I’ve been celebrating Rosh Hashanah my whole life, but it’s only actually been in the last few days that I’ve thought of the holiday in terms of how it might compare to the secular New Year.

With secular New Year’s Eve, we count down to midnight when a fresh calendar year begins. Jewish people follow a lunar calendar which means that not only are our holidays dependent on the moon’s cycles, they also all start at sundown. So while your wall calendar might have Rosh Hashanah written on Monday, 9/26, this year, technically it starts the evening before. We refer to the evening start of a holiday as erev. As such, tonight is Erev Rosh Hashanah – directly translated as New Year’s Eve! We aren’t counting down until midnight here; I believe the candlelighting time is 6:30PM (most holidays are marked as having begun once the candles are lit).

This means that, at the time of this post, I have about two hours left before Rosh Hashanah officially arrives. It’s comparable to 10:30PM on secular New Year’s Eve (around which time I’m usually fighting to stay awake!). I’m sure I am part of a very large company of Jews everywhere who have many memories of their relatives panicking to make sure they get everything done and/or get going in order to start celebrating the holiday on time. My parents used to freak out every time that we were going to be late in getting to my grandparents’ house, even though they only lived ten minutes away! It almost became a part of the tradition as a whole, and makes me chuckle to think about now. In a most unusual fashion this year, I’m not at all late with things. I’ve made an apple cinnamon pecan cake, salmon gefilte fish, and a noodle kugel to bring with us to my in-laws’ house; we’re leaving in about an hour. I just need to throw on a sweater and comb my hair again, and I’m good to go. How strange!

When I think of secular New Year’s, I think of resolutions, which sometimes I am pretty dismissive of. In some years, trying to commit to resolutions has only added unnecessary pressure, and I’ve often felt that resolutions get made only to be broken within weeks, days, or even hours, so I’ve wondered about the point of it all. But the truth is, Rosh Hashanah also has something of a tradition with resolutions too. We embark upon a brand new year, and within the first ten days of that new year, we are pleading with G-d for forgiveness and redemption, atoning for our sins and promising to do better. We commit to self-reflection, and to betterment of ourselves and more importantly of the world around us. This is the kind of resolution I can get behind. It’s not just about quitting a bad habit or trimming our waistlines; it’s bigger than that. It’s about reconnecting with doing the right thing by ourselves, by each other, by those in need, and by G-d; we do our best to make all of those pieces come together in one glorious puzzle. Somehow, Rosh Hashanah makes all of that make sense for me in a way that I never think about with secular New Year’s. Maybe these ponderings will emerge again in December.

Shana Tova (Happy New Year) everyone! I’d better go finish things up around here. Oh, hey – now I feel that pressure of the clock after all, if only to ensure I get this post published in proper time! How’s that for auld lang syne?