This page of the new Lev Shalem machzor displays the traditional Al Chet list of sins juxtaposed with an alternative meditation on sins against the earth penned by Jewish Theological Seminary Dean Daniel Nevins.

This Rosh HaShanah, worshippers in Conservative congregations across North America will find themselves using a new machzor.

More than 150,000 copies of the High Holidays prayer book, Mahzor Lev Shalem, have been pre-sold, representing orders from nearly 130 of some 650 affiliated congregations.

The strong interest might stem from “dissatisfaction with all previous machzors,” said Rabbi Stuart Kelman of Berkeley, Calif., a member of the committee that produced the prayer book.

Lev Shalem in one sense is a response to two oft-heard criticisms of the Conservative movement: that it is too elitist and too intellectual.

For starters, the entire Hebrew text is translated into English, and parts that might be said aloud are transliterated to allow those without Hebrew knowledge to participate in group call and response.

“It’s a great expression of the tremendous desire of the Conservative rabbinate to share the tradition we are so steeped in with people wherever they are, and not to wait for them to become scholars to appreciate it,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative body that produced the book.

For experienced worshippers who want a Hebrew text unencumbered by directions indicating where one should stand and sit, subtle signals like the icon of a bowing man offer what Conservative leaders hope will be a rich, free-flowing davening experience.

Commentary and exposition fills the right side of each double-page spread. The left side is for poems, meditations, and alternative readings.

Ten rabbis and cantors spent 12 years putting together the machzor, meeting twice a month for more than a decade.

Each of 10 regular contributors took one or two assignments, and the entire group read and commented on one another’s work. Kelman wrote the commentaries for the evening and morning Sh’ma and its blessings, for example, while Rabbi Leonard Gordon of the Germantown Jewish Centre outside Philadelphia wrote the commentary for Kol Nidrei and the Torah and Haftarah readings.

The groups also translated the Hebrew text into English and read it aloud to make sure it flowed, so those who cannot “feel” the meaning of the Hebrew can use the English for prayer.

Some who saw early versions of the machzor, which was tested in six congregations, say it answers a need articulated by Conservative laypeople as well as clergy.

“There is a cadre of congregants that is really looking for spiritual connection,” said one Conservative rabbi, Geoffrey Haber of Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill, Mass., in a YouTube video that is being used in an unusual PR campaign to promote the prayer book. “Oftentimes our movement can be focused on the intellectual rather than the spiritual, and people are really thirsting for that. I think this machzor speaks to that.”

Along with the content modifications, Lev Shalem is aesthetically pleasing. It weighs less than two pounds, is printed on fine paper, and uses a typeface that has been specially designed and copyrighted.

Like the new daily and Shabbat prayer book released concurrently by the Israeli Masorti movement (see jstandard.com), Lev Shalem is being presented as a prayer book for all Jews rather than as a Conservative text.

“We’ve got everyone from [the late Israeli poet] Yehuda Amichai to the Lubavitcher rebbe,” said committee chair Rabbi Edward Feld of Northampton, Mass., senior editor of the project. “It does not represent any single theological perspective.”

Feld spent weeks poring through the rare book room at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, mining more than 60 old prayer books for long-forgotten piyyutim, or liturgical poems, to include along with modern meditations.

On one page is an 11th-century poem on the new year by Joseph Ibn Abitur of Spain. On another is “For the Sin of Destroying God’s Creation,” JTS Dean Daniel Nevins’ environmentally sensitive version of the Al-Chet, the traditional confessional list of sins recited during Yom Kippur services.

The way the texts are put together is in keeping with Conservative values, Feld said.

“We include myriad Jewish voices, allowing them to be in conversation with each other,” Feld said. “In that sense it’s a deeply Conservative text because the movement at its best is about the conversations that can take place between tradition and a 21st-century sensibility.”

The entire traditional text is included, with a few modifications. The matriarchs are included as an option on the same page as the traditional Amidah prayer that refers only to the patriarchs. Kelman says that’s progress from the most recent Conservative prayer book, which relegates the matriarchs to a separate page.

The Conservative leadership hopes the new machzor will help worshippers deepen their synagogue experience. Those who produced it, however, have less lofty expectations of their first encounter with the book from the other side of the pulpit.

“In all likelihood,” Kelman said, “I’ll be looking for mistakes.”

JTA

Rabbi Isaac Jeret practices blowing the shofar. Arianna Jeret

Steven Levine is matter-of-fact about his family’s upcoming plans for Rosh HaShanah.

At the dinner table with his wife, Leslie, everyone will share resolutions, round-robin style. He will take the day off from his job at the U.S. Olympic Committee and his three children won’t go to school in order to attend synagogue.

But only on the first day — it is no two-day holiday for this family.

“It’s all cost-benefit analysis,” says Levine, 45, a risk-management director from suburban Denver.

The local public school is still open on the Jewish new year, and vacation time is tight at work.

“With other obligations and commitments,” he says, “we do the best we can.”

“I suppose there’s a bit of a feeling of guilt for not doing more, but I’ve rationalized it that the second day is not significant.”

During her time as a congregational Reform rabbi, C. Michelle Greenberg had a different experience: She was not expected to lead synagogue services — if the synagogue even had services — on the second day of Rosh HaShanah. Greenberg, 37, an educator now living in the San Francisco Bay area, says the second day often would become a chance for her “to celebrate as a participant” at another synagogue.

With its seemingly stepchild status outside the more traditional segments of the Jewish community, what is the significance of the second day of Rosh HaShanah, anyway?

When the ancient Israelites started celebrating the “head of the year” 2,000 years ago, it was, in fact, a one-day holiday. But with no convenient wall calendar to indicate the actual day to celebrate, they relied on trustworthy witnesses to report to the Sages at the Sanhedrin, or Supreme Court, a new-moon sighting. Shortly thereafter a series of smoke signals would alert the scattered communities that it was time to start the holiday.

The ineffectiveness of this communication system was not lost on the Sages. They declared Rosh HaShanah a two-day holiday, or a “Yoma Arichta,” one long day of 48 hours, to ensure that Jews everywhere were celebrating at approximately the same time.

Yet as Mark Leuchter, director of Jewish studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, points out, despite “its root traditions, Rosh HaShanah has changed dramatically in 2,000 years,” and “we don’t do it the way our ancient forefathers did it.”

Nor is there any need for smoke signals today.

“The only part of the original recipe that we’ve retained” is the practice of observing the holiday for 48 hours, Leuchter says. “Now we do it not because we have to but because we used to. It ties us back to a hallowed antiquity.”

Menachem Schmidt, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi in Philadelphia, says beyond the historic reasons for observing two days, “there is also a spiritual reason for needing 48 hours for the holiday.”

Rosh HaShanah is a time when every individual affirms his own relationship with God, and “the second day is an equal part of that process,” Schmidt says. There is a new light in the world, he says, “and it takes two days to accomplish that.”

With the drop-off rate in synagogue attendance from the first to the second day at approximately 75 percent, Rabbi Isaac Jeret of Cong. Ner Tamid in Los Angeles says that, “as a rabbi, [I think that] what to do on the second day of Rosh HaShanah is a fascinating question, and I look at it as very important to have different offerings” the first day and the second day.

On the first day, when he expects some 2,000 attendees — many not even belonging to the Conservative synagogue — the service has musical accompaniment and Jeret gives a longer sermon. On the second day, “it is shul-goers day,” he says, and the service reflects that.

“There’s no choir and no piano,” he says. “We take out the Torah and study text as a community. It’s a much more intimate service.”

Rabbi Charles Arian of the Conservative Beth Jacob Synagogue in Norwich, Conn., says he makes no secret of the fact that he would get rid of the second day on the Jewish festival holidays of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, Passover, and Shavuot, which are tacked on to remind diaspora Jews that they are not observing the holidays in the land of Israel.

But of Rosh HaShanah, he says, “It really is different.”

One reason, Arian explains, is that it is the only Jewish holiday that is also a rosh chodesh, or a new month. But, he adds, a “complete repeat of what you did [the day] before” is not necessary. He says wearing new clothes or eating a new seasonal fruit (like a pomegranate or an apple) also makes the second day of Rosh HaShanah different and meaningful.

For Ephraim “Fry” Wernick, 33, heading to Dallas to spend Rosh HaShanah with his family may not be different from years past, but it will be meaningful.

He says the first day of the holiday may seem more important, but the Washington-based lawyer will attend services at a nearby traditional synagogue on both days.

“Rosh Hashanah is a cleansing of the soul,” Wernick says. “I try to use the time for spiritual growth, reflecting on the year, righting the wrongs.”

And two days, he adds wryly, is just a start, adding that “I need as much time as God will give me.”

JTA

What flavor is your Jewish New Year?

For most, since childhood, Rosh HaShanah begins with apples dipped in honey — a custom meant to ensure a sweet new year.

Over time, the practice has yielded a kind of “ritual comfort food.” But what if we like change? What if you don’t like apples, or honey, or find the combination a drip too saccharine for your tastes?

If the quality of time we choose to celebrate is sweetness, I want to revel in a different kind of sweet.

Does eating the same old thing mean we will have the same old year? Does habit have us singing, “Apples dipped in honey on Rosh HaShanah, blah?”

You don’t need food dehydrators and molecular gastronomy to come up with something better. Just follow your nose, taste buds, Jewish history, and ritual.

This time of year is marked by various kinds of food symbolism. For example, we eat round challah, for the continuity of the Jewish year — with some even decorated with wings or ladders anticipating our spiritual ascent. We also enjoy pomegranates, their seeds representing the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.

Before we say a blessing and eat, why not first consider what we want our food to represent?

For a different new year, one filled with as many new experiences as the seeds of the pomegranate, a new combination is in order. Unless someone is planning to open a Rosh HaShanah food truck, we will need to come up with our own.

[Note: Many of the combinations suggested below include dairy products.]

New combos can be as easy as apples and honey, providing new ways to feed our heads at the head of the year.

To start, let’s not stick with honey. According to Claudia Roden, author of “The Book of Jewish Food,” “Beekeeping is not mentioned in the Bible, and it is believed that every mention of honey in the Pentateuch refers to date honey.”

“Let me take hold its branches,” says a verse of the Song of Songs, which refers to the tamar, or date palm.

Since we want to bring more Torah into our lives at this time of year, then in our search for a new combo, let’s begin with dates. Many already use them as an ingredient of charoset at the Passover table.

Pairing dates with another ancient food, ice cream — it dates back to 400 BCE Rome, around the time of the prophet Malachi — provides a kid- and adult-friendly treat to begin 5771.

So chop up a few dates and sprinkle them onto some vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. Think of having a refreshing new year, filled with many satisfying acts of lovingkindness. Serve and say “L’shana tova umetukah,” wishing you a sweet new year.

Another traditional approach to ensuring a sweet new year is eating taiglach, literally “little dough,” small pieces of dough boiled in honey.

What about substituting another form of cooked dough, one with which many Jews are even more familiar: crispy chow mein noodles? We already eat them at Christmas; apparently even Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan does it. So why not on a Jewish holiday?

For dipping, use the bright red sweet and sour sauce, of course. Let the dipping remind you to dip into your wallet; Rosh HaShanah is an auspicious time to make someone else’s new year sweet as well.

Moving beyond food, at this time of year we should be thinking about the “land of milk and honey,” and that sounds a lot like a drink. What about raising a glass for a sweet and healthy year?

With their myriad ruby red seeds, antioxidant-rich pomegranates have a holiday significance, reminding us of both mitzvot and fertility; all the good deeds and perhaps new babies we intend to surround ourselves with in the coming year.

We can toast the year with a glass of pomegranate juice, sweetened further by serving it with a slice of orange on the rim of the glass. Pomegranates and oranges are agricultural products of modern-day Israel.

Chocolate has all the right stuff to bring us Jewish New Year joy. For a Jewish connection, Rabbi Debra Prinz on her blog “Jews on the Chocolate Trail” has amply demonstrated the involvement of Jewish traders and producers in the chocolate trade.

Your favorite fruit or berries dipped in melted chocolate can easily introduce a sweet new year.

But if I have my choice of chocolate-infused ways to bring in Rosh HaShanah, it’s a chocolate egg cream every time. A treat with a Jewish history, many historians say the drink dates back to early 1900s Brooklyn. Louis Auster, a Jewish Brooklyn candy-store owner, is said to have created the fizzy chocolate drink.

To make a chocolate egg cream, traditionalists recommend using only Fox’s U-Bet, still made in Brooklyn. The ritual calls for a little milk and some chocolate syrup; add cold soda water and stir vigorously.

The bubbles represent the sparkle we all need to begin a new year; their sweet effervescence can get us written onto that big menu of life. Chocolate mixed in seltzer on Rosh HaShanah, yes!

On Rosh HaShanah, sound the shofar. But in the quiet that follows, listen for the fizz.

JTA

What can we learn about repentance and forgiveness from the apologies of public figures? Edmon Rodman

What can Tiger and Toyoda teach us about teshuvah?

With Selichot, a service of repentance-centered prayers said in preparation for the High Holidays, coming on the night of Sept. 4, is there anything we can learn about saying “I’m sorry” from public figures?

The airwaves have been full of apologies this year. But unlike soon-to-be former BP Chairman Tony Hayward or South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, we usually don’t say “selach li,” “forgive me,” on TV in front of a world audience.

The community that does hear our Ashamnus is more immediate, even intimate, as we often rise to say these words of confession among family and friends, even the people we may have wronged.

Why compare ourselves to public persons? After all, we didn’t wreck the Gulf of Mexico, create poorly engineered automobiles, or destroy our relationships by seeking additional sexual partners.

At least mostly.

Most of us discover that even though the wrongs we commit never come with front-page headlines, in our mind’s eye they can read just as large.

So what can we learn from these staged and scripted, spin-doctored apologies? That for shul on Yom Kippur we should toss the traditional white and instead don apologetic blue? Or perhaps learn to pull an easily readable “I’m sorry” face?

Behind all the staging and showmanship, there still seems to me a kernel of kavanah, of right intention, in these apologies. Some attempts, like Sanford’s, often fall short, seemingly compiling a public “al chait” of how not to say you’re sorry. But we can find insight in the attempts and learn from their mistakes.

“I have been unfaithful to my wife,” Sanford declared before delving into the detailed how and why of his indiscretions.

In contrast to this public confession, Selichot prayers are not much interested in specifics; in fact they are TMI (Too Much Information) sensitive. Standing in synagogue, thankfully, we are not asked to offer up personal details.

Since Judaism has no word for “sin,” the declarations in Ashamnu recited late on a Selichot night, in comparison to the governor’s specifics, ask us to acknowledge collectively where we have missed the mark. We say instead, “We have been perverse. We have been wicked.... We have used sex exploitatively.”

Furthermore, in his book “Living Judaism,” Rabbi Wayne Dosick relates that according to the Talmud, “God forgives transgressions committed against him, but offenses against another human being must first be forgiven by the injured party.”

We don’t know what Sanford said to his family before going on the air. Perhaps he sought forgiveness from his wife and family. Regardless, I know that when I screw up, independent of TV coverage, I have real work to do.

Tiger Woods’ admission of a life of philandering and deception, even if you think golf is a total snooze, probably stirred you awake this year.

“I know I have bitterly disappointed all of you,” he said in a televised apology.

“For all that I have done, I am sorry,” he said in an attempt of teshuvah, which literally means “return,” and in Judaism describes the concept of repentance.

Further into the apology, Woods even sounded Ashamnu-esque: “I was unfaithful. I never thought about who I was hurting. I felt I was entitled. I was wrong. I was foolish. I brought this down on myself.”

Liturgically, what I found lacking was the key summation of humility that is said following Ashamnu: “We have abandoned excellent commandments and judgments, and it has not turned out well with us.”

For its apology, British Petroleum chose a 60-second commercial to say sorry for environmentally ravaging the Gulf of Mexico. What was it about Hayward’s voice that didn’t sound apologetic? I don’t think it was just his accent or stiff demeanor.

On Selichot, which means forgiveness, when we rise to say “Shema Kolenu,” “hear our cry,” the tenor of our voice or even our fumbling with the words is not supposed to matter.

So forgetting about his tone, what I found missing from Hayward’s words was a sentiment akin to the prayer’s directedness, in which we ask God to “help us to return” and the promise that we “shall indeed return.”

Yes, Hayward and BP took responsibility and promised “we will make things right.” But where was the teshuvah? Are they going to change? Will this ever happen again? The nasty online parodies of this commercial seem to indicate that many just didn’t buy it.

This winter, appearing at a hearing before the U.S. Congress, the grandson of Toyota’s founder apologized for his cars that would not stop.

“I am deeply sorry for any accident that Toyota drivers have experienced,” Akio Toyoda said.

In an almost High Holy Dayish tone, he asked his customers for forgiveness and faith.

“I ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again,” he said.

Was Toyoda preparing us for the Thirteen Attributes of Corolla?

To make amends, he offered that Toyota is dedicated to “continuous slow improvement” — the “change for the better” concept of “Kaizen” upon which Toyota has successfully built itself.

If applied to human relationships, it is this idea of gradual improvement — of continuous teshuvah, if you will — that among all the apologies I find the most useful for Selichot and the season’s Days of Repentance.

Beginning with Selichot, it’s a long, hard haul down an often curvy teshuvah highway, and steering toward “continuous slow improvement” sounds like a plan.

JTA

In the past several months I have had some version of the following exchange several times. I tell a friend that I’ve just finished a book on repentance, and they respond that they find the subject of forgiveness very interesting. It’s psychologically so much healthier to forgive than to hold on to resentments, they say, signaling that they appreciate the importance of the subject.

The confusion between repentance and forgiveness is widespread, it seems, and also very telling.

Forgiveness, I explain, is what we are called on to do when we have been wronged by others. It is about our willingness to be generous and compassionate with those whose behavior was hurtful and unwarranted.

First Person

Repentance, by contrast, is what we are called on to do when we have wronged others. It involves confession of our transgressions, feeling remorseful, making an apology, seeking forgiveness (hence the confusion in the minds of so many), offering restitution, soul-searching, and, ultimately, uprooting old patterns of behavior from our lives.

In these weeks leading up to Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, it seems that the need to understand what repentance is and why it matters is more urgent than ever.

Forgiveness is difficult and rare, to be sure, but I want to suggest that engaging in real repentance is far more difficult, more easily misunderstood, and far less frequently practiced. Despite the many dozens of sermons that our rabbis have given on the subject of repentance, the process of repenting remains something of a mystery to most Jews (and, of course, not only Jews). Many never take seriously the need for repentance. Others start out on the path of repentance but give up when they encounter one of the many obstacles along the way.

“Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah” looks at the implications on morality and relationships of taking responsibility for one’s actions Jewish Lights Publishing

Repentance, in our time, has become a lost art. Consider several examples, which I suspect all of us will find familiar.

The family member who regularly deflects any suggestion that he or she has done something to hurt others by insisting repeatedly that it’s really someone else’s fault;

The boss who can acknowledge making mistakes but can never quite say the words “I’m sorry,” or worse, can say the words but not express genuine remorse;

The spouse who cheats on a partner and apologizes profusely, but who is utterly unprepared to do the hard work of restoring the trust that he or she has undermined;

The friend who has a habit of speaking harshly or acting impulsively, but lacks the self-awareness to explore the real roots of those dysfunctional patterns of behavior;

The person who has promised repeatedly to reform her ways — to give up smoking, to make more time for her children, to be less judgmental of others —yet continually falls back into old patterns.

In light of these examples — and hardly a day goes by when we don’t encounter others — we do well to ask, What makes genuine repentance so difficult? And why should we even bother trying?

Repentance, what Jewish tradition has called teshuvah, “turning” or “returning,” entails nothing less than a radical transformation of our selves and our relationship to others. It requires profound psychological self-awareness, which includes both recognizing our own moral blind spots and exploring the character traits that cause our moral lapses in the first place.

It demands that we take full responsibility for our behavior, without hesitation or equivocation, and then take action to undo the effects of that behavior on others. And if this were not enough, Judaism teaches that the process of teshuvah is never really finished. Each time we have an opportunity to make the same mistake again, we need to renounce the past and choose a different path.

So doing teshuvah is literally an endless process. Forgiving others for their transgressions against us is a piece of cake by comparison.

There are many obstacles on the path to true repentance: ego, self-deception, dishonesty, and stubbornness, to name just a few. Because we all want the approval of those we love, it is tempting to cover up or minimize any actions that might cause us to lose their affection. Because we all know that others expect us to make amends when we hurt them, it is tempting to feign remorse and utter empty words of apology.

But counterfeit repentance, like counterfeit currency, has no value. We can’t restore our integrity or repair our relationships with others by merely pretending to repent; there are no shortcuts to an ethical life.

All of which explains why genuine repentance is so rare. The work of examining our selves and repairing the relationships we have broken is arduous and always has been.

The culture in which we live only compounds the difficulties. The expectation that we can find a quick fix for every problem that arises makes us less prepared to engage in the long, morally demanding work of teshuvah, and even less inclined to try. When virtual friends take the place of real relationships, we lose the impetus to cultivate the sort of emotional honesty that teshuvah requires of us.

The costs of ignoring the work of repentance are not easily quantifiable, but the evidence is all around us. We see it in the lives of public figures — politicians and corporate executives — who get caught in some deceitful or fraudulent behavior, and then baldly deny it.

We see it on daytime television shows, where people confess their transgressions before a live audience for their entertainment, never displaying a hint of the contrition or soul- searching that is the mark of repentance.

Most of all, we know it in those quiet moments in our own lives when we recognize that we are not living up to our own moral standards, yet don’t know how to restore our own sense of wholeness and integrity.

The ultimate benefit of doing teshuvah is that it offers us a way to overcome our past precisely because we have confronted and taken full responsibility for it. It enables us to escape the sense of guilt — in some cases, even despair — with which many of us live.

In its place, we come to live with self-acceptance and hope because we know that moral renewal is always a possibility. We may even discover, as the ancient rabbis taught, that through repentance our transgressions can be transformed into merits. The rewards of doing teshuvah are commensurate with the effort we expend.

This year when we celebrate the Ten Days of Repentance, which are the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, we would do well to focus on what repentance is and what it is not. Surely it is easier to think of this as a time to forgive others for their transgressions against us. But it is far more rewarding to remember that this time is really a gift, an opportunity to engage in searching moral introspection about the ways in which we have harmed others and so failed to be our best selves.

Tradition has laid out the path to follow, as well as how we can work with our internal resistance and what we stand to gain in the process. All that we require is an accurate understanding of what is required of us and the will to begin anew.

JTA

Sounding the shofar in the synagogue on Rosh HaShanah is the high point of my year.

How to Blow

No other mitzvah in Judaism is so dependent on a personal skill or entails such high drama. And, at least for me, no other mitzvah renders quite the same sense of achievement and fulfillment.

I often hear people talk about the awakening power of the sound of the shofar — how awesome a moment or how inspiring an experience it is for them to hear it. For me, it is both a very public and an intensely personal experience.

As I approach the bimah, I find myself quite alone, concentrating intently on what I have to do. Yet I am also highly conscious of being surrounded by hundreds of people who are relying on my ability to enable them to fulfill the central observance of the day.

Veteran shofar-blower David Olivestone sounds the shofar. Orthodox Union

In Numbers 29:1, the Torah designates the first day of the seventh month, that is Rosh HaShanah, as “a day of blowing the shofar.” The Oral Law, as interpreted by the rabbis, sets out a number of regulations concerning both the instrument itself and the manner in which it is to be sounded.

The shofar must be fashioned out of a ram’s horn. With the smaller end cut off, the horn is straightened out a little by heating it, so that a hole can be bored through it. A mouthpiece is formed out of the horn itself. No finger holes or reed or valves — such as you would find on other wind or brass instruments — may be added to help vary the notes. Thus, the only control you have over the notes is how you use your lips and your tongue.

How to blow

To produce a note, first use your tongue to moisten the extreme right-hand corner of your lips, and place the shofar firmly against them in that spot. With your lips tightly closed, make a tiny hole in them where the shofar is, and then force air into it as if you were making a Bronx cheer (a rasping sound), but without actually producing such a rude noise.

If you get it right, a bright and powerful note will emerge from the shofar. The tighter you squeeze the shofar against your lips, the higher the note that you will sound. It’s not necessary to puff out your cheeks; breathe in and hold the breath in your chest, letting it out slowly to control the length of the note.

The three mandatory sounds

The sequence and the length of the notes must follow the established pattern with great accuracy. The three mandatory sounds are designed to awaken thoughts of repentance and of subservience to God in the mind of the listener.

First comes the teki’ah, a long, clear note of alarm. This is used to bracket each of the other sounds, which are meant to be evocative of crying. The shevarim, a three-part note, suggests the sound of sighing or moaning. The teru’ah, consisting of nine rapid-fire staccato sounds, dramatically echoes the sobbing of someone in despair.

One hundred notes, in various combinations, are sounded at intervals throughout the Rosh HaShanah service, and each set is capped by a teki’ah gedolah, an extra-long note in which many also hear a sign of strength and hope.

Not too many people persevere enough to become really proficient at blowing the shofar. Many of those who do learned the skill from their fathers at a very young age, as I did. But each year, it takes much practice over a month or so both to perfect the notes once again and to retool the muscles of the lips and the strength of the lungs.

The sound of my thoughts

Since there’s no real way of controlling the quality of the shofar’s sound, you can never be 100 percent confident that the right sound will emerge. So whatever spiritual thoughts I might try to have as I prepare myself to sound the shofar usually evaporate as I begin, and I am left simply hoping that, despite my trepidation, the notes will come out as perfectly as they did when I was practicing.

Yet being in control of the shofar’s power is an extraordinary privilege and responsibility. Sometimes I like to think that the next teki’ah or the next shevarim could be the one that carries the congregation’s prayers soaring to the heavens. Sometimes I pray that this wordless animal sound that I am producing will have the ability to take the place of the prayers that are unspoken — those that words are inadequate to express.

I will not deny that I enjoy the congratulations and the handshakes that are offered to me after I sound the last teki’ah gedolah. And what am I thinking at this point, when it’s all over? That in just one year, with God’s help, I will get to do it again.

JTA

Kosher food manufacturers depend on the Jewish holidays for the bulk of their annual sales Photo by Sue Fishkoff from Kosherfest 2008

When I’m invited to a Shabbat or holiday meal in a Jewish home, I always bring kosher wine. Not just that, I try to make it Israeli.

It’s not because I keep kosher. And it’s not because the people I’m visiting necessarily keep kosher either. So if wine by any other name smells as sweet, why bother?

I know I’m not alone — plenty of Jews who ordinarily ignore the laws of kashrut buy kosher wine for Shabbat, stock their pantries with kosher-for-Passover food every spring, and pay extra for kosher catering at their simchas.

First Person

Hypocritical? Yes, if you believe that procuring and ingesting kosher food has merit only within the context of a fully observant lifestyle.

But that construct holds sway today mainly at the far ends of the observance spectrum, among those fervent Orthodox who don’t tolerate any deviation from kashrut and the few remaining “Classical Reform” Jews who are hostile to Jewish rituals in general, including kashrut.

Increasing numbers of American Jews, however, do not consider the kosher diet a divine commandment but an expression of Jewish identity, a mark of membership in the tribe. As such, it is a moving target. Putting kosher food on the table does not signal one’s denominational affiliation or level of observance so much as the strength of one’s connection to Jewish history, Jewish community, and even the land of Israel.

It’s a different, very modern, and specifically Western way of looking at Jewish dietary practice.

Let’s look at the numbers. According to the Mintel International Group, a market research firm that releases periodic reports on the kosher industry, more than 40 percent of the food sold in American supermarkets is kosher-certified. The group’s January 2009 report claimed that $195 billion of the previous year’s $400 billion in food sales came from kosher products, an astounding figure given that Jews make up less than 3 percent of the population and most don’t even keep kosher.

Sure, most of that kosher-certified food represents mainstream products such as Heinz ketchup and Tropicana orange juice that consumers buy without regard to its kosher status. More telling is the same report’s figure of $12.5 billion in sales within the dedicated kosher market, meaning products bought because of the kosher label.

Who’s buying this food?

Many are non-Jews who believe that kosher food, especially kosher meat and poultry, is safer, healthier, and of higher quality than its non-kosher counterpart. Others are non-Jews whose moral or religious beliefs are satisfied by kosher certification: Muslims who buy kosher meat when halal is unavailable and vegetarians who seek a “D” symbol indicating a meatless product fall into this category. They might be lactose-intolerant, assured by a pareve label that a product contains no dairy; the reasons are myriad.

But many of the people who buy kosher food on purpose are Jewish but nonobservant. Some of them buy kosher products for the same reason as non-Jews; they believe it’s safer or of higher quality. Many more, however, do it for reasons of community, tradition, and Jewish identity.

This is particularly true on the Jewish holidays, which have become times for nonobservant Jews to connect with their history by setting Jewish food on the table. Many Jews who don’t keep kosher the rest of the year buy kosher wine and matzoh for Passover, sometimes out of respect for parents or grandparents, sometimes because it makes them feel more Jewish, and sometimes because of an inchoate feeling that it would be wrong to do otherwise.

For its January 2009 report, Mintel surveyed 2,500 adults about their food-buying habits. Thirteen percent, or 335 respondents, said they regularly buy kosher food.

Of the 86 percent who said they were not observant Jews, 25 percent said they buy kosher food out of respect for their own or their partner’s family traditions. Researchers interpreted that to mean they are Jewish, simply not kashrut-observant. And more than half said they buy kosher products “occasionally,” which the researchers chalked up to Passover, Rosh HaShanah, and impending visits by the in-laws.

Food manufacturers are well aware of this holiday shopping phenomenon. Manufacturers of so-called traditional kosher foods such as matzoh and gefilte fish typically do 40 percent of their business strictly at Passover. Spokesmen for the Manischewitz Company put that figure at 50 percent.

When I was researching my book about kashrut and the kosher food industry, “Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority,” I spoke to many self-described nonobservant or partially observant Jews who bring out the kosher food on sacred occasions.

One woman in Glenview, Ill., told me that she keeps a kosher-style home, meaning she does not bring in pork or shellfish, but she will buy packaged food products without kosher symbols. She keeps “kosher by ingredient,” reading the labels to make sure a product contains no lard or other clearly non-kosher ingredients.

But when her children were growing up, she said, she made the family home kosher for Passover every spring. They’d put all the bread, pasta, cereals, and other non-Passover foods in a pantry, which she would lock for the duration of the holiday. The kids would draw skulls and crossbones on the door to indicate it was off-limits for the next eight days. She also bought kosher-for-Passover food items, even though those same foods without kosher symbols were good enough the rest of the year.

“Partly it was how I was raised,” she told me. “Partly it’s a way to identify as Jewish. And partly it’s to honor my forefathers and foremothers.”

So why do I seek out kosher Israeli wine for Shabbat and Jewish holidays? Probably because I miss Israel, where I lived for many years as a kibbutz volunteer and newspaper reporter.

Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin explains this as the (illusory) power of the artifact to collapse the distance between producer and consumer. When I hold a bottle of Yarden Cabernet, I feel a physical connection to the soil, the grapes, and the workers who produced it. And when I pour it into my cup and make the kiddush, I feel connected to the generations of Jews who have broken bread together over the years and are doing so today no matter where they live.

Illusory? Not to the soul. Names do matter, no matter how sweet the drink.

JTA

High on the list of Jewish martyr stories still retold, or at least alluded to, every Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur is the terrible medieval tale of Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. For refusing to appear before the bishop of Regensburg, who had requested that Amnon become a Christian, he had his limbs hacked off. What was left of him was arrayed alongside his severed parts and returned home in time for Rosh HaShanah.

As the chazan reached the climax of services that day, Amnon interrupted with a beautiful liturgical poem, and was promptly transported to his heavenly abode. Three days later he appeared to the saintly Rabbi Kalonymos to teach him the poem and instruct him to spread it everywhere.

That poem, the Un’taneh Tokef, now is a centerpiece of the High Holy Days liturgy.

So goes the story, which is still told annually in many a synagogue before Un’taneh Tokef and its two-fold message: First, that “On Rosh HaShanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: who will live and who will die, who by fire, who by water ... who by earthquake, who by plague” and so forth; but second, that “penitence, prayer, and charity” can somehow alleviate the hardship of the decree.

“Who by Fire, Who by Water” explores the origins and meaning of the High Holidays prayer Un’taneh Tokef. Jewish Lights Publishing

It is hard to know which is more troubling: the prayer or the story of its authorship. “Who by Fire, Who by Water” (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010), the first volume in the “Prayers of Awe” series, chronicles the fascinating controversy that surrounds them both.

The problem with the prayer is that it seems patently scandalous. Was the fate of the 9/11 victims predetermined on the prior Yom Kippur? Did they die because they were insufficiently penitent, prayerful, or charitable?

The problem with the story is that it is hardly a message that inaugurates a new year with spiritual promise. Besides, it is pure fiction — there never was a Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. “aMNoN” is a rearrangement of the letters in the Hebrew Ne’eMaN, “faithful.” This is a morality tale of a putative “Rabbi Faithful” who stood fast in the face of adversity. The poem probably was composed as early as the fifth or sixth century by a Byzantine Jewish genius named Yannai, who symbolized anything but Jewish martyrdom in the face of inhuman persecution. Yannai personified a Jewish literary efflorescence rarely matched in the following millennium and a half.

Perhaps the story we should be telling every Rosh HaShanah is the Jewish potential for artistic brilliance, Judaism as a well of creative potential, not Judaism as the religion of the persecuted masses. Un’taneh Tokef illustrates classic liturgical poetry at its best, an abundance of biblical and rabbinic allusions wed to clever Hebrew wordplay and alliterative excellence.

But what about the poem’s troubling message? While the first half of “Who by Fire, Who by Water” provides the truly stunning story behind the myth and the poem (alongside an annotated translation of both), the second half elicits commentaries from some 40 thoughtful contributors who tell us how they handle the poem’s message.

Here, arguing over the poem’s merits, are rabbis and laypeople; men and women from all denominations of Jewish life (some of them artists, writers, scholars, teachers, and musicians); from around the world and spanning generations. Prayer book editors from Europe and North America wrangle over whether to include it, fudge its message, or trash it. Modern feminist and professor Wendy Zierler surveys Un’taneh Tokef as a theme in modern literature.

Israeli professor Dalia Marx recalls how the poem emerged anew as a symbol of Israelis dying in the Yom Kippur War of her youth. Bible professor Marc Brettler provides the biblical backdrop for the poem, and several writers subject it to literary analysis, exposing its very many poetic virtues.

Author and scholar Erica Brown plays with the image of God as writer of our fate: What kind of writing would God prefer? Fiction? Journalism? Scholarship? “Who shall live and who shall die? The answer is ‘Me!’” concludes Rabbi Edward Feinstein, in his insistence that Un’taneh Tokef speaks directly to our most cherished illusion — that we are in charge of our fate, when in fact we are painfully out of control.

Isn’t that the whole point of the High Holy Days, delivered, in Rabbi David Stern’s judgment, “with the poetic force of a two-by-four”?

But still, does God really work that way? Does the God of Judaism write real-life obituaries in advance, not just fiction, journalism, or whatever?

No, says Rabbi Delphine Horveilleur of Paris, the very idea is unpalatable. The poem’s theology is “infantilizing.” But it is a poem, with all the complexities of Shakespeare, Keats, or Cummings, and requiring all the interpretation they do. It may not even be about God at all, so much as it is about us.

Perhaps the poem’s real climactic claim is that even though “our origin is dust and our end is dust,” we yet carry God’s name in our very being.

“We are part of something everlasting,” says Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso.

Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig concurs: “We may write books, create foundations, generate ideas, found or revitalize synagogues that will nurture generations long after we have died.”

Both the poem’s authorship and its message matter profoundly. Which Jewish type we emphasize, Amnon the martyr or Yannai the poet, will determine what Judaism we hand to the next generation.

The dizzying panoply of commentaries gathered here ask and answer the core religious questions of our time: Who is God? What is fate? How do humans matter? What spiritual truths can carry us forward when mortality’s harsh reality becomes finally unavoidable?

JTA