Two Calendars, Ten Questions
OOPS! Nothing like ending the year with a misstep. This was supposed to arrive yesterday, as my emails are autoscheduled for Friday at 8 a.m. EST, but I had a technical difficulty. Please accept this early apology for an auto email arriving both on Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah.
Don’t want to read? Take a listen, here.
A few years ago, I was speaking to a non-Jewish colleague about the calendar. They always believed (as most people in the world do!) that the year begins in January, and ends in December. Of course, they’re not technically wrong. But, two calendars so many of us rely on actually begin in the autumn: the academic calendar, and the Jewish calendar.
All of us were children once, and most of us looked forward to the beginning of the school year in the fall. And if we had children, we once again lived by that cadence, for at least another 12 years. The start of the school year was an opportunity for freshness all around — new or new-to-you clothing, renewed learning, and personal growth. Maybe new after-school activities, or new opportunities that you aged into. Whatever the case, the beginning of the school year brought change and excitement (and a lovely return to routine!).
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, begins tonight at sunset. It literally translates as “head of the year” and for the many of us living outside of Israel, the holiday is two days. Much as the month leading into the school year takes preparation (buying school supplies, figuring out schedules and outfits and carpools), so too does the month leading into Rosh Hashanah. The month of Elul is all about preparing for the holidays.
Each year, we hear the shofar’s blast — and I’m always amazed that it is literally the same sound, unchanged, stretching back through millennia of Jewish practice. There’s something grounding about a ritual that doesn’t get a redesign every generation. New packaging perhaps, a marketing refresh, but the same “product.” The sound, just breath through a ram’s horn, calling us to attention the way it always has. There is rarely a difference in the sound, in its specific cadence or origin, no matter your observance level or origin (Sephardic, Mizrachi, Ashkenazi, etc).
The sound calls us to the newest of new starts. Rosh Hashanah isn’t only about looking back at the year that’s ending — it’s about the audacity of believing we can begin again. That’s not so different from January 1st and its resolutions, or September and its fresh notebooks. We are, it turns out, a species that needs punctuation. We need a marked moment to say: Here is where the old chapter closes and I get to choose the next one.
The difference is what each new year asks of us. A Gregorian New Year’s resolution is usually private — a promise to ourselves, often about ourselves. Rosh Hashanah asks something bigger. It asks who we’ve been in relationship to the people around us, to our community, to the causes and commitments that carry beyond our own four walls. The Days of Awe that follow aren’t about becoming a better version of yourself in isolation. They’re about repair: what did I owe someone this year that I didn’t give? Where did I fall short of being the person — and the giver — I meant to be?
That’s where I think philanthropy quietly belongs in this season. Legacy planning and end-of-year giving get treated like a January conversation, or a December tax deadline. But Elul and Rosh Hashanah offer something January never will: a spiritual framework for asking what we owe beyond ourselves, before we ask what we can deduct. The heshbon hanefesh — the accounting of the soul — isn’t so far from an accounting of our giving. Both ask: Did my actions this year reflect who I want to be?
So maybe the real starting point isn’t a private resolution at all. It’s a question — asked honestly, and answered slowly. That’s actually the whole premise behind 10Q, a project from the Jewish arts-and-culture nonprofit Reboot that emails you one question a day for the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Your responses go into a digital vault, and a year later — next autumn — they come back to you, unopened since the moment you wrote them. It’s a gentle, structured way to do exactly what this season asks: to take stock, out loud, and then check back in with who you were. And it’s not just last year available to you – it’s any of the years you have participated. I’ve been participating since 2014 (!) and I am always surprised to look back and see what was on my mind. It is a beautiful way to mark growth, chance, and time.
This year’s 10Q opens today, September 11th. If you’re looking for a way to make Rosh Hashanah’s reflection a little more concrete, it’s worth ten minutes a day. And the questions? Not Jewish, just human.
Mine isn’t as comprehensive as 10Q, but I’ll start with a question for you: what’s one relationship — to a person, an organization, a cause — you want to repair or deepen in 5787 (the Jewish year beginning tonight)? And how might philanthropy play a role?
Shabbat Shalom, and Shana Tova Tikatevu (a happy and sweet new year),
Kari
