When you have the same machzor, year after year, preparing for High Holy Days is a difficult project. How do you find new ways of looking at our liturgy? Of course, the core message remains: review the past year, apologize to those we’ve hurt and make amends, and resolve to do better next year.

 

One of the elements I introduced last year were updated “al heits – for the sins we have sinned against You” – walking down the center of a cul-de-sac or parking lot aisle, not muting a phone or putting it on vibrate at a    concert,… all those things that inconsiderate so-and-so’s do that drive us crazy. While I will  have the opportunity to share what I have with you second day Rosh Hashanah this year, I am asking you for your list – it can be a list of one. Would you please email me at RabbiJoeMendelsohn@gmail.com with your favorite “al heit”? I’d like to share them, anonymously of course, on Yom Kippur with the people I’m leading.

 

And if any of them applies to you, don’t tell me. Just tell yourself.