Sept. 9, 2006 – We take 60 minutes and call it an hour. We take 24 hours and call it a day … then seven days, a week …then a month and then a year. I recently saw the Broadway show "Rent" while on vacation, and I remembered the song "525,000 minutes." That's how many there are in a year! So we say, "Wow, that's a lot of minutes!" Then we lament, "Wow, where did the year go?"
The Jewish High Holy Days remind us that time is just a way of counting minutes and hours and days; it is our job, our responsibility to give meaning to them. Rosh Hashanah, which begins this year on Friday evening, Sept. 22, bids us to examine our lives during the past year. What did we do with the 525,000 minutes? Did we help one person to have a better life? Did we give of our time and our energies and our resources to better our community?
Did we ask forgiveness from one whom we offended? Did we help to resolve long-standing conflicts between neighbors or family? Did we show our love for our own spouse or children or parents? Did we study to help our minds grow? Were we honest in our relationships with other people?
Rosh Hashanah forces us to examine our lives, knowing that the destiny of every human being is being determined and that through our prayers, our charitable efforts and our true turning away from our wrongdoings, we can avert an evil decree for our own destiny.
We stand before God as all our deeds pass before us.
The judgment of Rosh Hashanah is sealed on Yom Kippur 10 days later (beginning Sunday evening Oct. 1 this year). As we spend the entire day fasting and in prayer, we end the day uplifted, knowing that if we are truly sorry and have turned from our evil ways, we are forgiven.
Before us lies another 525,000 minutes. May we use them more wisely this year and may we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.
