Rosh Hashanah: A Reflection on Connecting With Your Self
Written by Daniella Kahane, WIN Executive Director + CEO
Last night concluded the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. I have always felt that Rosh Hashanah, poised appropriately at the end of the summer, right as the school year resumes, and the season changes, as a singular holiday. Yes, it involves prayer, festive meals, and family time, but beyond those traditional holiday aspects, it is a time of contemplation, reflection, and of celebration coupled with a heavy weightiness.
In the Jewish tradition, it is not only considered the first day of the new year, but also the world’s birthday, and marks the beginning of the Days of Awe which lead to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in which every living being is judged. The Book of Life has been written but not yet sealed and the next 10 days leading up to Yom Kippur are considered to be the holiest of the whole year, in which we are forced to confront our mortality, to embrace our vulnerability, and to take a hard look at ourselves, our lives, our values.
Are we living our life to its fullest? Are we living in sync with our values? How have we failed over the last year? How have we succeeded? How can we shed the layers that block us from our core selves, from the truest manifestation of our being?
Beyond the apples we dip in honey, which signals the desire for a sweet new year, it is the shofar or the Ram’s Horn that most convey the holiday’s essence. The Shofar is traditionally blown 100 times in synagogue on both days of the holiday. It cries out with three types of blasts: long sonorous ones, three shorter ones, and then nine tiny staccato notes strung together. Every year, as I listen to this primitive instrument, I feel the power of its reverberations enter my soul, like a deep wake-up call, a guttural cry, as we attempt to reconnect with ourselves, mourn the losses of the past year, feel humanity’s anguish and pain, and also advocate and hope for a better year, a year of healing, of peace, of love, of light.
Like a negotiation with the Divine, we prepare for a month in advance, resounding the shofar from the first of the month prior, and taking stock of the last year, and casting our eyes forward to the next one. But at WIN we often say it is a truism that negotiation begins with the self. Before we can advocate our value with the external world, we have to uncover our own self-worth and also our own core values. How can we possibly assert ourselves with our counterparties, if we cannot articulate our own worth, and if we don’t know our own goals?
There is a beautiful traditional saying (credited to a Hasidic Rabbi of the 18th century) that sums up the essence of how we are to feel about ourselves during this existentially contemplative time. It instructs us to keep two pieces of paper in our pockets at all times. On one, “I am a speck of dust.” And on the other piece of paper, “The world was created for me.” We need both of these divergent, polar opposite sentiments, on us, with us, at all times. To me, the sentiment conveys the notion that true self-esteem comes from deep inner confidence in our own agency, to the point that we could believe the entire world was created for us, because we matter that much... because of our choices, and how we live our lives, the way we treat others, the charity and the kindness we bestow, matters. And yet, this sentiment is balanced with the humility that we were born from dust, and to dust we shall return. We are all mortal beings, and nothing is permanent, not our bodies, not our edifices, not our belongings, nothing but the legacy we leave, the love we give, the values we transmit.
Like attempting to steer a ship blindfolded and without a compass, we cannot begin to know how or where to put our attention and our energy without first connecting to our inner north star, and evaluating where we want to be... today, tomorrow, in a few weeks, months, years, etc. Reopening that connection to the self, uncovering our value but also our humility, like an umbilical cord to our soul, is what the shofar and Rosh Hashanah are all about. I hope that we can use these next transitional few weeks, as we move from summer into fall, to find the time and space to reattune to our goals, re-imagine our futures, and reconnect with ourselves so that we may know that we are but a speck of dust, but also that the whole world was created for us.
Wishing everyone a Happy, Healthy, Sweet, and Introspective New Year.
—
Daniella Kahane
WIN Executive Director + CEO
Become a WIN Woman
Learn to leverage your value and join a community of other ambitious women aspiring for more. Check out our WIN Woman membership.
LEARN MORE
