This year, my birthday, and the holiday Rosh Hashanah fall on the same day. Rosh Hashanah, has several names, it is the Feast of Trumpets, the beginning of a new year in the Jewish faith, the head of the year, the birthday of the world, the celebration of creation and it is the beginning of the High Holy Days.

It is a time for reflection, recognizing ones failures and shortcomings of the previous year, repenting and beginning the new year afresh.

Unlike birthdays where we eat cake, traditionally honey and apples are served at Rosh Hashanah. They serve as a symbol of hope for a sweet year ahead. If you’ve never eaten an apple dipped in honey you are missing a very special treat.

I have written before how September was always a special month for me and a time of new beginning. For one, it is my birthday month and my age ticked up another year, it was also the start of a new school year which marked a new beginning. Later in life, much later, I learned it was also a time of new beginning in G-d’s timetable.

As I reflect on my year gone by, I see many things I regret but I also see ways I have grown. I see my reactions to the frustrations and heartaches around me and in the world and I want to look more positively on how I can make a difference and not just complain.

Of course birthday’s traditionally come with wishes. If I could wish for anything on my birthday and have wish come true, I would wish for world peace, I would wish for an end to hunger, the end of sorrow, the end of hate.

If all those wishes are too grandiose or difficult, alternatively, I could ask for a cure for cancer and disease, healing for those who are sick especially one so close to me and so young. I would wish that we all could “love our neighbors as ourselves” – and I would wish that this love could start in my heart, with me.

Shanah Tovah u’metukah! May this year of 5783 be a good and sweet year for us all.

Photo by Galina Nelyubova on Unsplash