So today is Rosh Ha’Shanah, the Jewish New Year. Yes, I used the fancy spelling. One advantage of being a Jew in America is that you get extra holidays, and Rosh Ha’Shanah is no exception.

However, there’s a certain twisted sense of joy and doom that accompanies the fall High Holidays. Unlike the secular New Year which is mainly an excuse to just throw out all that’s old and welcome all that’s new (while ingesting excessive amounts of alcohol), Rosh Ha’Shanah brings reflection and introspection. As one of my supervisors remarked to me, “It’s that time of the year.”

According to Jewish belief, while we’re all munching on apples’n'honey and raisin challah, God is presumably sitting at his very large desk, writing in his very large Book of Life. He’s writing down the fate of every person for the new year - whether you will live or die, be sick or healthy, be rich or poor, be joyful or sorrowful. Thus, the ten Days of Repentance after Rosh Ha’Shanah leads to Yom Kippur, when God puts away his very large pen and seals that Book (but not without some final pleas from Jewish congregations worldwide to preserve our souls).

Now, I don’t really subscribe to that idea of a judgemental God sitting writing down in his little private journal, gleefully dictating the fate of every human on earth like a petulant teenager crossing out pictures in his high school yearbook. However, it’s very similar to another idea that I do believe in: karma. Do good things, and you’re bound to have good things happen to you. Do not-so-good things and you might be smote down tomorrow driving on Connecticut Ave.

And that is really the magic of Rosh Ha’Shanah. We mark the sweetness of a new year with apples dipped in honey, but we also take stock of the year 5765 gone past. Was it a year well-lived? Well-learned? Well-loved? Could we have done better? Tried harder? Done more good things and less bad things? Hurt less people? Loved more people?

These are very profound questions, and I’m glad I get the day off to try and answer them. And next year, I’ll be sure to actually remember more than two days in advance and make arrangements to attend synagogue.

As my mom says, “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a happy and healthy, peaceful and joyful new year.”