This new year, Rosh Hashanah 5780, is a day of new creation, new opportunity and new hope—hope that tomorrow’s world will be better, that tomorrow’s humankind will be kinder, happier, better adjusted, and that tomorrow’s world will thrive like none before it. This is the true meaning of Rosh Hashanah and the true reason to celebrate the start of the new year.

On Rosh Hashanah, writes Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, all things return to their origin. What lies there at their origin? Their tachlis. Tachlis—that’s another of those juicy, untranslatable Hebrew/Yiddish words, something like telos in classic Greek, but with a Jewish flavor. For example: “Let’s talk tachlis” means “get to the point already.”

I am. Your tachlis is your meaning, your purpose and your ultimate destiny. Each thing exists for some tachlis.

The Creator is a writer, yes, but the writer is also a creator. The writer uses words to create worlds, just as God spoke the world into being during the six days when the world came into being. Creation through language is not a one-time event but the enterprise of all writers and poets throughout time.

Unlike Jan. 1, when we often make resolutions, empty promises often unfulfilled, this is a time for preparing and understanding where we missed the mark and dedicating ourselves to taking action, bringing more wholeness to our lives. We open ourselves to the grandeur and awesomeness of this great day and all that it can bring.

As we humbly pass before God in judgment during the Days of Awe, we assert our very humanity by exercising our capacity for wonder and reverence. The inimitable nature of the human condition does not emerge from celebrating man’s ingenuity, but rather from our inadequacy: “Praise to those who fear you,” we pray, “good hope to those to seek you, confident speech to those who yearn for you.”

The sound reverberates in our bones and pierces our souls. It overcomes our individualistic particularity and touches on primal being. It brings us back to the moment when God conceived of the universe.

In an attempt to imagine this, I think of myself sitting beside God looking over the blueprints for existence. God turns to me and says, “Do you see? Do you understand how it all fits together? Do you want to be a part of this great project?” And so, I do look and try my best to comprehend, and I answer, “Yes, count me in.” That, to my mind, is what Rosh Hashanah is about.

Although our New Year lacked the sartorial splendor, food we did have. After services came the fruits of my mother’s nights of labor. My father made Kiddush and we dipped apples into honey for a sweet year. We began with ovals of gefilte fish in aspic crowned by carrot rings, along with horseradish and mounds of challah. After my brother warned that it would put hair on my chest I began skipping the horseradish.

Rosh Hashanah is supposed to be about creation writ large, and the creation of humanity in particular. However, the Torah and haftarah readings for Rosh Hashanah discuss family rupture, rather than creation. [.] Why did the rabbis of antiquity deliberately choose these devastating texts of familial disintegration and heartache for us to read on Rosh Hashanah? In order to emphasize the foundational primacy of familial relationship in Judaism and the human condition. So that we make amends with loved ones before it’s all over, rather than fall prey to the false idols of ego and radical individualism.

In some ways, navigating the High Holidays can be even tougher than Christmas for interfaith couples: Because Christmas is pervasive in American culture and society, most American Jews—even if they’ve never personally celebrated Christmas before—are already familiar with [Christmas] customs… Yet non-Jews are typically less knowledgeable about High Holiday rituals, practices, and liturgy—which sometimes even their Jewish partners don’t understand.