The New Year is upon us! Just a few more days until we ring in year 5770, and while Naomi shared what to expect from this weekend’s torah portions, don’t forget the necessary preparations for the coming holidays. Don’t know what to do? Look to last week’s parsha, Vayelech, for some guidance.

Source: http://www.davidrose.us

Sure, Vayelech primarily discusses Moses’ pending death and the fate of the Israelites (don’t worry, Joshua leads them into the land of milk and honey!). Based on this, you might be wondering how Vayelech prepares you for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In a wonderful (as always) G-dcast cartoon, the narrator explains how this parsha reminds Jews that they should write their own Torah. Whoa! Before you start panicking about how you could ever fulfill this, think about the possibilities. According to G-dcast, there are two ways you can complete this seemingly impossible task:

1. Sponsor the writing of a Torah – it’s not cheap, but it keeps you from having to spends hours upon hours (well, more like months upon months) writing the entire Torah in tiny Hebrew.
2. Embody the Torah – that is, integrate the Torah and it’s teaching into your everyday life.

Parshat Vayelech from G-dcast.com
More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com

While G-dcast’s suggestions stopped there, I began to wonder if there was a third choice. When you think about it, the Torah is the story of the Jews – how they came to be, their rituals, their laws, their history. So, couldn’t writing your own Torah be interpreted as writing your own story as a Jew? Perhaps this isn’t what was intended by the parsha, but what’s to stop you from chronicling your life for the education and understanding of future generations?

Keeping this third choice in mind, completing this task is an ideal way to prepare for the coming High Holy Days. These holidays purposely ask people to reflect on the past year, think about what they could have done differently, and make plans to do better. What better way to do that than to write down the story of your life and take from it important lessons for the New Year? If your entire life seems like too much, maybe try tackling just the past year. Think of it as drafting an outline before writing a paper. Once completed, your story will help you develop goals for the year, as well as indicate from whom you will need to seek forgiveness. Then, you can face the New Year prepared and ready to thrive.

-Sarah