It is a common theme in the days before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to feel a certain heaviness. I know I experience it every year.
After all, who wants to feel that the entirety of their coming year hangs in the balance of a judgment made in a single day?
We spend the next few weeks begging for forgiveness, often for things we are not quite sure of, things we do not actually plan on changing, or things we are not even sure we have already been forgiven for.
Of course, that is not always the case. A lot of good comes from reviewing our year and apologizing for things we legitimately regret.
But I believe deeply that most people who are thinking seriously about Rosh Hashanah have probably been trying quite hard throughout the year. They already know many of the obvious things they regret. They already know where they fell short.
So when the time comes, we can find ourselves scrutinizing every corner of our lives, searching for something else to apologize for, something else to fix, something else to add to the list.
Almost as if, by finding enough things wrong with ourselves, we can check the teshuvah box in our minds and somehow gain a little control over the uncertainty of the coming judgment.
But what if there is another way to look at these Yamim Noraim, these Days of Awe?
Not by stripping them of their seriousness, but by seeing that perhaps they were given to us not only to confront what is wrong, but to help us become new.
The Tanya, the seminal philosophical work of Chabad, says something remarkable.
Every year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the divine vitality of the previous year withdraws. Creation continues, as it were, on what remains of that old light.
Then, on Rosh Hashanah, through the blowing of the shofar, a new divine light is drawn into the world for the coming year. Hashem chooses, once again, to create and to rule.
And this new light is not simply a repetition of the one that came before it.
It comes from a deeper place.
Every year, something new enters the world. A new vitality. A new possibility. A greater potential for refinement than existed before.
And the beauty of this idea is that it is not only the world that becomes new.
We do too.
Tishrei gives us the possibility of stepping beyond the person we were last year and accessing a higher version of who we are capable of becoming.
We do not have to carry everything with us.
The same burdens. The same insecurities. The same stories about ourselves that we have repeated so many times that they have begun to feel like facts.
Those belonged to last year’s version.
This year, something new is possible.
Perhaps this is also why Yom Kippur, the day of forgiveness, comes after Rosh Hashanah, the day of judgment, even though it would seemingly make more sense to be forgiven before we are judged.
We begin the work of returning before Rosh Hashanah, but we do that work with the person we currently know ourselves to be.
Call it Me 1.0.
Then Rosh Hashanah introduces a new possibility.
Once a new light enters the world, we are given ten days to begin discovering what that new version of ourselves might be capable of. Ten days to move closer to Hashem with abilities, awareness, and possibilities we did not have before.
And perhaps that is what Yom Kippur offers us: the chance to emerge more fully into that new self.
Maybe this is what forgiveness is really doing for us.
It is not only erasing what was.
It is loosening our grip on the person we thought we had to remain.
We let go of the flaws we turned into stories about who we are.
We let go of them in thought, speech, and action, of course. We repair the damage we have caused as much as we can.
But we also let go of the narratives that tell us that because we failed in a certain way, struggled with a certain thing, or carried a certain insecurity this year, we must carry it into the next one.
At some point, after we have taken responsibility, it is time to put the weight down.
We choose instead to align ourselves with who we truly are, with who Hashem wants us to be, with what He sees in us.
And when we do, Hashem forgives us completely and gives us the possibility of actually living inside that new reality.
We spend so much of this season flapping harder and harder, like birds trying to force ourselves into the sky.
Trying to improve more.
Repent more.
Fix more.
Push harder.
But perhaps we are not birds at all.
Perhaps we are hot air balloons.
There is already something within us that wants to rise.
The work is not always to push ourselves upward.
Sometimes the work is simply to drop the weight.
And allow ourselves to rise.
Just like that.
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