Omer 2025 Day 33

Day 32

Day 33: This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew
Hod in Hod, Glory/Humility in Glory/Humility

You'll find this book on most rabbis' bookshelves and most Jewish libraries. It has become a staple of preparing for the High Holidays. In the summer of 2018, my friend Abby gathered a group of moms with young children to form a book club. She decided that in the bustle of parenting and cooking Rosh Hashanah meals, we also needed to carve out time for spiritual preparedness. She's very wise.

I started reading this book when my oldest was three or four months old, mostly on my pumping break at work. It invites deep personal introspection and offers a roadmap for how to engage with the sacred time built into the High Holiday season - the month before Rosh Hashanah, the Shabbat before, the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the final service of Yom Kippur, and even extending into Sukkot. The High Holidays are a time of glory and humility, when we feel closest to God and the most humbled. The act of teshuvah (repentance/returning) forces us to face the ways we didn't live up to our best selves in the past year and commit to doing better. It's both humbling to apologize for our faults, and glorious to seize that opportunity to grow.