A New Year in the Book of Life
This weekend we begin the High Holiday season, known in Judaism as the “Days of Awe”.
The season opens with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Unlike January 1st, which is usually celebrated by staying awake far later than one should and imbibing intoxicating beverages, Rosh Hashanah is traditionally celebrated by eating astonishing quantities of food. In North America, it is often the holiday of brisket. My family, however, has its own custom. We eat duck on the first night of Rosh Hashanah because, quite frankly, we like duck.
This year I found myself in Washington, DC, a week before the holiday, attending a conference on directed energy weapons. Recognizing a rare logistical opportunity, I ordered a turducken from a butcher from Baltimore. For the uninitiated, a turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey. It is either the pinnacle of culinary engineering or evidence that humanity occasionally has too much free time on its hands.
Getting a twelve-kilogram turducken from DC to Israel via Vienna turned out to be a remarkably complex exercise. By the time I had coordinated packaging, transportation, customs, refrigeration, contingency planning, and a healthy amount of prayer, I realized I was drawing on nearly every lesson I had learned during thirty-five years in the defense industry. Integrated Logistic Support is apparently useful for more than missile systems.
Assuming all goes according to plan, we will likely be the only family in Israel eating turducken on Rosh Hashanah, and we intend to savor every bite.
Which raises an obvious question.
The High Holidays revolve around themes of judgment, repentance, forgiveness, and self-examination. They culminate ten days later on Yom Kippur, when Jews spend twenty-five hours fasting, praying, and standing before God, asking to be inscribed in the Book of Life. How does a holiday devoted to introspection become associated with festive meals? Shouldn't the Days of Awe be, well, more awe-inspiring and less cholesterol-inducing?
The answer lies in one of Judaism's most remarkable ideas.
Rosh Hashanah is indeed a day of judgment. Yet it is also a day of celebration. We enter the courtroom knowing that we will be scrutinized. We know our shortcomings better than anyone. And yet we arrive dressed in our holiday finest, surrounded by family and friends, sharing festive meals and wishing one another a sweet new year.
Why?
Because Judaism teaches that while we are being judged, we are also confident of the outcome. Not because we believe we are perfect. Far from it. Rather, because we believe in the possibility of growth, repentance, and renewal. We celebrate before the verdict is issued because we trust that God judges not only what we are, but what we can become. We sit down to a festive meal because we believe that our future has not yet been written. Or, perhaps more accurately, because we believe that it can still be rewritten.
That idea became profoundly more difficult to embrace three years ago.
The final day of the High Holiday season in 2023 coincided with October 7. On that terrible day, 1,200 Israelis were brutally murdered, and more than 250 were taken captive. The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust occurred not on a random date on the calendar but precisely during the period when we ask to be inscribed in the Book of Life. At first glance, the message appeared devastating. How can we speak about being written in the Book of Life when so many lives were brutally cut short?
Yet history rarely reveals its meaning immediately.
As horrific as October 7 was, it is worth remembering where Israel stood on October 6. We were a nation tearing itself apart. Political divisions had become existential. Public discourse had become poisonous. Predictions of civil war no longer sounded far-fetched. At the same time, Iran had methodically constructed a ring of fire around Israel, arming and funding proxies on multiple fronts while we distracted ourselves with internal disputes and belief that our enemies wanted peace and quiet as much as we did.
October 7 shattered us. But it also awakened us.
The years that followed reshaped the State of Israel. Faced with an existential challenge, Israelis rediscovered a sense of shared purpose. Our enemies expected paralysis. Instead, they encountered determination. The nation that emerged from the trauma was not the same nation that entered it. Israel reasserted itself militarily, strategically, and morally. We regained confidence in our ability to shape our destiny rather than merely react to events.
In a very real sense, we rewrote the Book of Life. Not the individual book that every person hopes to be inscribed in on Rosh Hashanah. The national book. The story we tell about ourselves. The future we imagined for our children.
This observation does not diminish the pain. It does not erase the losses, the grief, the hostages, or the scars carried by countless families. No amount of brisket, duck, or even turducken can adequately celebrate what was paid to achieve our national rebirth. Some wounds will remain with us for a generation.
But Rosh Hashanah has never been about denying reality. It is about confronting reality while refusing to surrender hope.
The message of the holiday is that the future is never fixed. Individuals can change. Families can heal. Nations can recover. Books can be rewritten.
And so, as we gather around our holiday tables, whether they hold apples and honey, brisket, duck, or an absurdly oversized turducken, we celebrate not because the world is perfect, but because we believe it can become better.
Wishing one and all a sweet new year. A year of victory and quiet. A year of comfort and healing. A year of growth, both physical and spiritual. And a year in which we merit to continue writing ourselves, our families, and our nation into the Book of Life.
Good Things,
Ari Sacher
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