It’s going to be an extra-cabernet Rosh Hashanah this year (original) (raw)

Lisa Kogan is an author and speechwriter. This op-ed was adapted from the forthcoming “On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors and Advocates.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve believed in God, though I worry that this God I don’t believe in will be mad at me, and I’ll end up with an asymmetrical bob or a bad credit score.

Still, I like Rosh Hashanah. I like putting out cloth napkins and supermarket flowers and my mother’s wedding china. I like pomegranates and dates, and the way our neighbors always show up with that really good challah from the Hungarian bakery. I like how our dog discreetly positions himself directly under the toddler at the table for any fallen-brisket opportunity that might present itself. I like watching my husband guilt people into putting away their phones. I like hearing my pal Judith announce that she just wants to live long enough to see her grandchildren pick a gender.

I like getting out a yellow legal pad, writing down the crummiest thing that happened to each of us since we last gathered, then ripping our long list of sorrows into confetti. I like everyone grabbing a handful of the confetti and tossing it into the air just before we dip slices of Granny Smith apples into farmers market honey. I like leaning in and catching up and wondering where the time goes.

Has it really been almost 365 days since Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust? Have four entire seasons come and gone since I watched college campuses explode in rage, since I crossed the street to avoid a guy shouting antisemitic slurs in front of my corner bodega, since I first wept for Palestinian civilians and despaired for tortured hostages and watched the world go off its rocker?

What would my mother have made of all this darkness? I open the box that holds her old recipes on stained index cards and trace her loopy handwriting with my fingertip. My mom would not have crossed the street. I clean carrots, smash garlic and chop onions. My mom guided Detroit schoolchildren through a Holocaust memorial center.

I dust and vacuum, and tell myself I’d be doing this even if we didn’t have company coming. My mom knew how to talk and she knew how to listen and she knew that some people have been through the kind of pain that can harden a heart.

I order red wine and add an extra leaf to the dining table. My mom did not suffer fools, but she also understood that a rose is not its thorns — she had a way of answering fear with fact, cruelty with compassion. I call the liquor store back and ask for three more bottles of cabernet. It’s been that kind of year.

The doorbell will start ringing at 7 p.m. We are — the vegan duck incident of 2019 notwithstanding — a pretty mellow group. We run the age gamut from 2 to 96. We have Buddhists, Catholics, Jews and your occasional lapsed Protestant. We come in a variety of colors, orientations and income levels. I guess our common bond is that every single one of us is more than ready to say goodbye to the year 5784 on the Jewish calendar.

So, at sundown on Wednesday, we’ll light the candles and we’ll recite the prayers. I’ll look around the table and remember when my daughter was little and my mom was here. Once dinner is done, some of us will curl up on the sofa and talk late into the night, and some of us will hang out in the kitchen, transferring food from big Tupperware containers into slightly smaller Tupperware containers. All of us will be taking stock of our lives and missing somebody we love and thinking about the future.

It never occurred to me last Rosh Hashanah that Israel would be at war on this Rosh Hashanah, nor did I understand that this war could unleash a fury that would ricochet around the globe. But here we are, all of us weary, all of us anxious, all of us looking for something we can believe in — all of us hoping for better days ahead.