Here we are, together, standing at the threshold of a new year. Rosh Hashanah arrives, and with it, the awesome task of t’shuvah — that heroic act of turning, which demands of us a profound cheshbon haNefesh, an accounting of the soul.
But let’s be honest with each other. For many of us, this intense season of introspection can feel less like a path to spiritual renewal and more like a dreaded summons. We are called to stand before the great metaphor of the Book of Life, holding our breath, waiting to see if we’ve measured up. The anxiety is palpable. It can feel, if we’re not careful, a bit like that strange holiday from the show Seinfeld — Festivus — where the main event is the "Airing of Grievances," and a father gathers his family just to tell them all the ways they have disappointed him.
Sometimes, the weight of our tradition can make the High Holidays feel like a spiritual Festivus. It can feel like we are being called into the principal's office, knowing we’ve done something foolish and are about to be reprimanded. This feeling of a looming, external judgment feeds a profound spiritual danger: the fear that our mistakes define us, that our fate is sealed, and that we are powerless. It suggests a rigid, predetermined world that erases our agency and undermines the very purpose of t’shuvah itself.
Today, I want to suggest that we have a choice. We can challenge this paralyzing perspective. And we can begin by understanding the critical distinction between the productive fire of guilt and the destructive poison of shame.
The renowned researcher Brené Brown, who has spent her life studying vulnerability, gives us the modern language for this ancient distinction. She identifies guilt as that uncomfortable but deeply productive feeling that says, “I did something bad.” It focuses squarely on an action, a transgression. It’s specific, and it’s repairable. Shame, on the other hand, is the devastating, identity-based attack that whispers, “I am bad.”
Why is this distinction so crucial for us today? Because shame paralyzes. It is correlated with addiction, aggression, and despair. Brown’s research reveals that shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better. After all, if we believe we are fundamentally broken, why would we even bother trying to return? Shame is a form of self-annulment, allowing a momentary failing to define and erase our entire worth.
This is not just psychology; it is deep Jewish wisdom. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that Judaism is a quintessential guilt culture, not a shame culture. A shame culture is obsessed with public image and conformity. A guilt culture emphasizes our individual responsibility before God, before our own conscience. This ethic is so powerful because it allows for the essential separation of the sin from the sinner. Our deeds can be rectified without erasing our essential dignity.
So while guilt is uncomfortable — that inner dissonance that tells us we’ve strayed — that discomfort is precisely what motivates meaningful change. It is a signal to act, not a verdict of worthlessness. The sacred task of Rosh Hashanah is to learn how to transform the anxiety of guilt into a productive curriculum for our own growth.
This journey begins with a powerful truth our tradition gives us for comfort: we are not alone in our imperfection. In fact, we are in the very best of company.
Shame thrives on the myth of perfection, on the isolating belief that everyone else has it all figured out. But our Torah, with radical honesty, tells us otherwise. The human condition begins with a story of failure. After their transgression in the garden, Adam declares, “I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” This is the classic expression of shame — it leads to hiding and blame-shifting, not the accountability that guilt demands.
And this theme of human struggle continues through the flawed, beautiful lives of our ancestors. Their stories are our stories. We remember Sarah’s jealousy, Avraham's terrifying faith, and even the tension in God’s role in these narratives. Our texts remind us that spiritual strength is not found in avoiding the struggle, but in having the courage to engage with life in all its messiness. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The credit belongs to the [one] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.” Our patriarchs and matriarchs were in the arena. And so are we.
This idea — that our mistakes do not define our essence — is not just in our stories; it is embedded in our most dramatic rituals. In biblical times, on Yom Kippur, two goats, nearly identical, were brought before the High Priest. One was offered to God, representing our true, pure, essential self. The other, the scapegoat, symbolically carried our mistakes away into the wilderness. The message is breathtaking: your sins are real, but they are not you. They are a doppelgänger, an identical-looking self that can and must be separated from your true core. Our tradition insists that the part of you that strives, that loves, that connects — that is the real you. The rest is just a story that can be sent away.
If Rosh Hashanah sometimes feels like a fatalistic judgment, it is because we have become stuck in a single, powerful metaphor: God as Judge, passing down a verdict to be inscribed in a sealed Book of Life.
But a metaphor is not a fact; it is a lens. It is a tool for understanding. And, yet, as the linguists Lakoff and Johnson teach, the metaphors we live by don't just describe our reality; they create it. Think of the "war on drugs" — that metaphor focuses us so intensely on conflict that we fail to consider vital paths like treatment or economic aid, because those simply aren't moves you make in a war; the metaphor itself traps our thinking. In the same way, when we overuse the metaphor of the Book of Life, it powerfully highlights Divine power, but it also hides our own agency and our role as partners with God, creating a spiritual fatalism that can remove our very incentive to transform.
What if we had the courage to choose a different metaphor for this day, one also rooted deeply in our tradition?
What if, instead of the courtroom, we chose the metaphor of Hayom Harat Olam — Rosh Hashanah as the birth day of the world? A birthday is not about judgment; it is about potential. It is about celebrating a new beginning. This metaphor highlights our capacity to bring newness into the world, to be creators ourselves.
Or what if we embraced the metaphor of God’s coronation? A sovereign is not a sovereign without a people who freely choose to crown them. This metaphor highlights our power. It suggests that holiness is not just imposed from above; it is something we actively bring into being through our choices and our commitment.
By choosing the lens of creation and partnership over judgment, we reclaim our agency. We shift from the terrified question, “What will be written for me?” to the empowered declaration, “I am ready to help write the Book of My Life.” This choice unlocks the most revolutionary idea in Judaism: that t’shuvah is not about fixing a mistake, but about self-creation. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught that the penitent becomes, in the eyes of our tradition, “a different person.” This is the ultimate antidote to shame, which tries to hold us captive to our past.
This resonates with what the psychologist Carl Jung wisely said: “I am not what happens to me. I am what I choose to become.” When we assume authorship of our own stories — even the chapters marked by pain or failure — we regain the power to write the ending. We are no longer merely characters in a story written for us; we become the authors.
So how do we walk this path? How do we become the authors of our own renewal? Our tradition gives us a plan.
First, we need a structure. Maimonides provides it: regret, confession, and resolve. These are concrete actions. But Rambam, with his profound understanding of the human soul, offers us a subtle but crucial insight in the very order of his words. He teaches that the first step is to face the future — to resolve to change our path. Only after we have set our intention forward does he mention the need for regret. It’s a brilliant psychological move. He is telling us: Don't get stuck looking in the rearview mirror, or you will crash. First, turn the wheel. Point yourself in a new direction. Only then, once you are moving toward hope, can you safely and productively reflect on the path you've left behind.
Second, we cultivate a tender heart. Rabbenu Yonah Gerondi, a Spanish rabbi from the 13th century, speaks of a “holy sensitivity,” a bushah as an essential toward real and transformative t’shuvah, an awareness before God that softens the heart and deters repetition. This is not the toxic shame that crushes us, but the quiet, inner sense of unrest that recognizes the gap between who we are and who we could be. It is the purifying awareness that kindles a real return.
But this sensitivity must be fiercely protected. Our Talmud is unequivocal: to publicly shame someone is like shedding blood. This is why our communal confession, the Ashamnu, is in the plural — we have erred — protecting each individual from public degradation.
Finally, we must learn to manage the messy drama of our own faults. Brené Brown talks about the first, unfiltered story our fear and anger tell us when we fail. A story of blame, of self-protection, of catastrophe. The first step toward healing is to get that story out of our heads, perhaps by writing it down. This simple act helps us see it for what it is — not reality, but a first draft. We can then look at it with compassion and ask, “What is really going on here?” And we can begin to write a more honest, more courageous second draft.
Ultimately, this work requires us to choose vulnerability — to take off the “armor” of perfectionism and allow ourselves to be truly seen. This is the central challenge of the New Year: to step into the arena of our own lives, accept our imperfections, and courageously commit to becoming the person we want to be.
We began this reflection confronting the anxiety of the Book of Life. We conclude it by recognizing that our inscription is less about a passive verdict imposed from above, and more about the radical, active choice we make in this moment. Rambam teaches that when we stand before God in prayer, God relates to us not as a knower of the future, but as a knower of our hidden, innermost hearts right now. Your sincere desire for change, your heartfelt commitment to turn, in this very moment — that is what creates the inscription.
The promise of our prophets remains: “My people shall never again be ashamed.” T’shuvah offers restoration, not disgrace. As Jung reminded us, we are defined not by what happens to us, but by what we choose to become.
This Rosh Hashanah, let us seize our power. Let us reject the paralysis of shame, harness the productive call of guilt, and choose the path of courageous self-creation. By doing the inner work — the difficult, vulnerable, and often messy process of reckoning and repairing — we affirm that we are fundamentally worthy.
May we be inscribed in the Book of Life, not because our fate was predetermined, but because we, in this sacred moment, chose life, chose transformation, and chose to create ourselves anew.
Shanah Tovah.
[1] https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/metzora/the-power-of-shame/
[2] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
[3] https://www.yu.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Understanding%20the%20Teshuva%20Process%20of%20the%20Yamim%20Noraim.pdf
[4] https://www.sefaria.org/Sha'arei_Teshuvah.1.21?lang=bi
[5] https://www.yu.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Understanding%20the%20Teshuva%20Process%20of%20the%20Yamim%20Noraim.pdf
[6] Joel 2:26–27
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