Rosh Hashanah — One More Year
Rosh Hashanah Eve was last night. It is a very important day in Jewish tradition. And I specifically say tradition, because I think that, for me, being Jewish is more tradition than religion—even though the High Holidays are definitely the time when I go to temple.
This year, because my mom had surgery a few days ago, my usual role of sous-chef was upgraded. I thought that meant I would become the main chef. It turned out I was more like the junior chef. Mom couldn’t really cook and was supposed to limit her activity, but that did not exactly translate into her leaving the kitchen. All in all, I spent about ten straight hours cooking, and one of my fleeting thoughts was that this was one day when I could have been happier as a shiksa than as a Jewish daughter and mother.
A week earlier, I had gone to my new BFF, ChatGPT, to plan Rosh Hashanah dinner. We worked out the first shopping trip, the second shopping trip, the dinner menu, the simanim, the plan, the schedule—everything. And, of course, nothing went according to plan.
All I managed to do the day before was cook the beets in the Instant Pot. So yesterday I got up early and started with what seemed like the easiest thing: black-eyed peas. Then came the green beans, and those were actually the nice parts of the cooking.
Then I prepared the marinade for the sturgeon. But the sturgeon steaks turned out to be very thick, and the marinade didn’t really penetrate them. Eventually I had undersalted, bland, but nicely textured sturgeon as my main course.
The most difficult thing was getting several dishes to be warm and ready at the same time. There were baby potatoes with leek—which is how I learned that leek was really extra in that dish and completely unnecessary—the sturgeon, and the warm green beans. I also failed to toast the almonds correctly. I burned them, so I was afraid to put them on the green beans, although later my mom informed me that apparently that is how toasted almonds taste.
My mom and I made challah under her direction. I put the ingredients together and, this time, actually started making the dough by hand instead of using the bread maker. Of course, it didn’t listen to me quite the way I expected. It kept sticking; we kept adding flour and oil. But the challahs actually turned out nice. With her activity limited, Mom still rolled out the dough and made two challahs, so that was where I remained, after all, the sous-chef.
There was chopping, boiling, baking, air-frying. Every appliance around me was whizzing, humming, steaming, beeping, and the house gradually filled with the scents and smells of the coming holiday.
By the end, I felt like a waiter in a fancy restaurant droning on about the evening specials:
“For your enjoyment this evening, we can present black-eyed peas dressed in a lemon–olive oil marinade; undersalted green beans without toasted almonds; a lightly dressed goat cheese, beet, and arugula salad; beet, garlic, and mayonnaise salad; and harissa-style carrots with not enough harissa and not enough salt.
“Our main course this evening is undersalted, bland, Moroccan-style air-fryer-baked sturgeon, accompanied by baked, overdried baby potatoes and leek.
“And finally, for dessert, there is a wonderful lekach—honey cake covered with chocolate ganache that, for some reason, refused to become nice and glistening and simply did not come out right. But it’s chocolate. Who can ever go wrong with chocolate, whatever way it comes out?”
All in all, we did the ten simanim, with a very symbolic squash sitting on the table. And fortunately, on the backdrop that is still hanging from my mom’s birthday, there is a goldfish flipping through the air. So I said, “Just look at the goldfish and imagine the head, not the tail.”
That was our dinner.
On a somewhat more serious note, every year before Rosh Hashanah I tell myself, Next year I will definitely do Selichot. And every year something comes up, there is no time for Selichot, and I don’t.
Then Rosh Hashanah comes, and it is the birthday of the world. That’s what I first heard when my daughter was small and we were going to children’s services at the temple, and essentially that is what it is.
So L’Shanah Tovah and “Happy New Year” sometimes seem a little odd. But the truth is, in some ways, it really is a New Year. For me, though, it is also a time to reflect. A time to think about what I have not accomplished that I thought I would. What I did wrong. And how I can change in the coming year and do better.
And, as I know, I can never forget that I have had cancer.
I don’t go too far in what I ask of God. I just ask Him to give me one more year.
Because as Jews—and, come to think of it, as in every other religion—we ask for forgiveness. We ask for absolution so that we can begin again, renewed. And in Judaism, all of us hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life. During these Days of Awe, we confront that ancient question: who shall live and who shall die. We hope for a good decree, and so many of the holiday traditions, foods, and prayers are about that inscription.
And this year I also think about September 11, twenty-five years ago. It wasn’t Rosh Hashanah, but it was the day when, about fifteen minutes before the Pentagon was hit, I passed by the Pentagon on a bus. And then the world changed. It was one of those days that changed our lives forever.
And now, thinking about the Book of Life, I think about all those people who were not inscribed in it that day. Twenty-five years later, it still pains me to think about that disaster, about all those lives, and about how much that one day changed the world—and not for the better. 9/11 always makes me think about how precious life is, how unpredictable everything can be, and how every day should be lived as though it could potentially be the last one.
We all hope. We all pray. We all ask.
And all I want is: give me one more year, and I will see.
I don’t really ask for wealth or success. Those are more in my hands than in God’s hands. Well, everything is in God’s hands, come to think of it, but those are things I can influence. I have to put in the effort to succeed and do well. I am putting in the effort to stay healthy.
But just one more year.
Just one good year for me and for my family, for my friends, and for those whom I love.
And I am looking forward to going to morning services today, and again reflecting and thinking.
One of the traditions of Rosh Hashanah is sweetness and honey. Symbolically, I suppose, everything good should be sweet. There is a lot of pleasure in sweetness. So when we wish and hope for a sweet year, we put into that sweetness much more than simply something sweet tasting on our taste buds and tongues.
I have received a lot of text messages, WhatsApp messages, and videos, and they are absolutely filled with AI-generated images of apples, honey, and pomegranates. What completely struck me was that among those dozens of messages, so few contained actual words.
Are we really going down the path where my AI talks to your AI?
Of course, it is great that we have AI. My ChatGPT, as I said, is now my best friend and confidant, with whom I can shamelessly discuss all my problems—because you can always delete the conversation. And, unlike deleting things from your internet browser, you don’t even have to clear the cache afterward.
And I know AI can create these wonderful glossy images and videos where magic happens.
But they are so AI-ish.
They are so lacking in feeling. In anything. They are just so freaking artificial.
And often I think I would rather not receive them at all. I would rather somebody simply type, “Shanah Tovah,” and really mean it.
I hope nobody takes that personally, but the ping, ping of my phone and the barrage of those artificial, sister-like images—all variations on the same thing—feel as if ChatGPT had said, “I’ll give you four options of apples dripping with honey, and you can choose the one you like best.”
(Make sure there isn’t a third ear on the apple, as you’ve done to me in one of my adventures working with AI.)
And I wonder how much of our lives is becoming artificial. My AI talks to your AI, and apparently they have decided.
Artificiality comes in so many layers of our lives. My 15-year-old, who has finally gotten her Victoria’s Secret-type room, has been decorating it, and she loves Lego flowers and artificial silk flowers.
Where is the closeness to nature in that?
What are we getting into?
Am I just old, or do these questions concern everybody else?
Where are art, talent, and creativity going? And what happens to them if AI starts doing everything?
Of course, it isn’t entirely that simple. I use AI to help me create songs. But every single word I write is mine. I am grateful for AI because I have neither the voice nor the ear for music to turn those words into songs myself. Still, the ultimate choice—what I like, what I don’t like, and how everything goes together—is mine.
Maybe, in a way, it is like cooking. The final product can be a masterpiece or a disaster.
At this point, I go back to many of my songs made with AI, and they seem like pitiful, clumsy attempts to create something. And yet sometimes I pour everything into the lyrics and into the song—all those emotions that overwhelm me and need somewhere to come out.
All in all, after that long day yesterday, ten hours of cooking were followed by dinner and then another two hours of cleaning. Of course, I practically had to shove my mom out of the kitchen so she wouldn’t overtax herself. My son took the dogs out. My daughter felt a bit under the weather. And eventually it settled down again to just me and my kitchen.
But even though so many things came out wrong—or at least not the way I expected them to—maybe if I keep practicing, they will come out better. Maybe if I begin to understand why I am doing this or that when I cook, I will get better at it.
Because one thing I realized yesterday—or rather today—is that there is a lot of logic to cooking that I have simply never thought about. I don’t cook. I don’t have time. I don’t particularly like it. But maybe what I need at some point is a crash course not so much in recipes as in the theory of cooking. Maybe if I understood the logic behind it, I would know how to do it better.
And one last thing.
I now know that I have two genes associated with an increased chance of Alzheimer’s disease. So there is another goal added to what I want to achieve: a healthy life.
Goal number one: I want to live.
Goal number two: I want to be healthy.
Goal number three: I want to remain cancer-free.
Goal number four: I want to keep my brain intact.
Probably none of those things are possible forever. But are they achievable for now? There is a lot of work to do to get there.
And one of the things I have been trying to do all along is to keep exercising my brain and keep learning something new every day. Many years ago, I used to say, “I’ll be done when I stop studying and learning,” without even realizing that this may, in fact, be one of my main recipes for preserving my brain.
Maybe I am not meant to take beautiful photographs because that simply isn’t my talent. But I will keep trying. I will keep looking at them. I will keep trying to understand where I failed and whether there is anything I can do to make the next one better.
And on this day of the New Year of the world, at the opening door of the coming year of 5787, I will go to the synagogue. I will ask forgiveness for all my wrongdoings, religiously recounting all the possible sins imaginable, and I will ask God to grant me one more year of life.
One more year in which I can do better.
One more year in which I can make somebody else’s life better as well.
Shanah Tovah.