This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation

by Alan Lew

Every soul needs to express itself. Every heart needs to crack itself open. Every one of us needs to move from anger to healing, from denial to consciousness, from boredom to renewal. These needs did not arise yesterday. They are among the most ancient of human yearnings, and they are fully expressed in the pageantry and ritual of the Days of Awe, in the great journey we make between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Every moment, we take in a breath and the world comes into being, and then we let out a breath and the world falls away.

The soul wants to awaken.

Loss is inevitable. Entropy is a fact of life. What’s done cannot be undone—but it can be healed; it can even become the instrument of our healing.

Every moment contains the capacity for good and evil, life and death, a blessing and a curse, and everything depends on our choice.