High Holy Days Preparation Guide

Rabbi Jeremy Schneider

You have until the end of Yom Kippur to take stock of the life you led this year, to look at where you have fallen short in your spiritual, emotional and physical aspirations, and reflect on what you can do to improve yourself in the year to come. It is also the time of year when you approach others whom you may have hurt during the past year and seek their forgiveness. (And as a classroom teacher and your rabbi, I highly recommend you not leave this work till the last minute.) Think back over the last year and list all of the things which happened in your own life.

• What really made you proud?
• Where did you find your nachas – your sources of joy?
• What were the challenges you faced?
• What did you do with those challenges?
• What remains undone, unexamined, unapproached?
• Who was sick, who is sick, who has recovered?
• What were the major life changes this year, and what became more comfortable for you in its ongoing responsibility?
• Think of two moments in the last year which made your heart sing, and two moments what made your soul ache.
• What do we want our new year to look like?
• In what ways do we have to change in order for the desire of our hearts to happen?
• What needs to be done to undo the things we have done that were wrong?
• How can we prevent them from happening next year?

We have the opportunity to not move time, but to change how we move through time.