How are you preparing for the New Year? While probably subdued compared to years past, will you plan to be downtown or to watch the ball drop on television? Will you be with friends, perhaps wearing some snazzy paper hats with noisemakers? Will you raise a glass? Will you finally sing past the first line of Auld Lang Syne? Are you thinking about your resolutions for the coming year?

Rosh HaShanah feels very different than the secular New Year. While we too have hats, well, some of us, and we too hear an ancient noisemaker plus we too raise a glass accompanied to Kiddush and sing of the past, most of the similarities end there.

Rosh HaShanah is about looking forward but not before looking back. For the first 10 days of the new year, we are in the final stretch of the old year. The Book of Life has not yet been closed and however literally or metaphorically we understand that, we also understand that this is the time to let last year’s life lessons finally teach us. To get on not “the right” but “the righteous” path, we are given three simple, though multi-layered paths: Repentance, Prayer and Tzedakah. Once we have worked toward righting our wrongs, then, ten days into the year, we begin again. Beginning again does not mean taking vows, to which Judaism has always had an aversion. Not only might they take God’s name in vain, but they might also lessen one’s own name if not fulfilled. Instead, we do a full soul-scan and renew our days as in the past. We commit our hearts, souls and might to becoming the person we once were or once dreamed of being.

On the secular new year, if we make resolutions, how often are they about losing weight or exercising more? The goal in looking forward should be lifestyle change: reprioritizing family over work, health over impetuous eating and drinking, kindness and compassion instead of sheer competition. Here is my guess: ten days into the secular year, by January 10, most people who make resolutions will have forgotten them or feel guilty that they broke them.

Let us use this other opportunity to begin again in order to take one step toward rather than away. As we enter 2022, let us use our Jewish values to ring in this new year all the more so because we will enter this other new year on Shabbat, a taste of the world to come.