Why does Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sundown on Sept. 11, come before Yom Kippur?
After all, shouldn’t we acknowledge our failures of the past year and make amends before we celebrate the new year? Shouldn’t we empty some of our emotional and spiritual baggage so we can walk into the year ahead with greater resolve? So why do we do the reverse — celebrate and then atone?
Rabbi David Wolpe offers an answer I have always loved: Real change begins in gratitude.
Lasting transformation rarely happens overnight. It grows from a feeling of possibility and hope, and momentum builds from there. So before we do the work of Yom Kippur, before we examine all the ways we have failed, we need to remember all we have done and all we can still do.
An Open Door for Everyone. On Sukkot, guests are welcomed into the sukkah — a tradition of hospitality that's central to the holiday. My Jewish Learning holds that same door open all year, welcoming anyone curious about Jewish life and community. Your gift keeps it open.
Rosh Hashanah celebrates the creation of the world. It awakens us to life, possibility, the people we love and the time we still have with them.
And once we remember that, something shifts: We want to care for what we have received. We want to use our time with wisdom. We want to be more present. We want our lives to become a blessing.
With that perspective, Yom Kippur becomes not simply a day of guilt, but a day of opportunity. It becomes a chance for real cheshbon hanefesh, an honest accounting of the soul, energized by hope.
Then we open the machzor, or High Holiday prayer book, on Yom Kippur, and recite Ashamnu and Al Chet, Jewish prayers of confession. We name the ways we have betrayed, wounded, deceived and hardened our hearts. As a rabbi, I have seen what can happen when one person finally says to another, “I know I hurt you.” The hurt does not disappear. The past does not change. But something changes. A weight is lifted. Healing becomes possible.
And while confession is essential, if we focus only on what we have done wrong, guilt can replace hope. We may start to believe that change is impossible.
So what can we do? Mishkan HaNefesh, the Reform Siddur, offers another kind of confession in the Vidui section of the Yom Kippur morning Amidah. One reading, called “For Every Act of Goodness,” asks us to say, “Let us affirm the good we have done.” It names, among other things, “the good we have done through acts of generosity and compassion.” At my synagogue, we recite this together. And if this is not part of your community’s practice, you might read it silently, or simply name for yourself one act of love, courage or repair from the previous year.
This confession of goodness, while new to many High Holiday synagogue services, is not itself new. The Torah describes a ritual called vidui ma’aser, the confession over tithes. A person stood before God and declared that they had given the required gifts to the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow. The person was saying: I fulfilled my obligation. I shared what I had. I remembered the people who needed me.
Rav Abraham Isaac Kook saw in this ritual a model for what he called vidui la-tov, a confession of the good. He taught that we should sometimes give words to the good we have done. Not to brag or to pretend that we have no need to change, but to name the good so we can keep doing it. Rabbi Avi Weiss later composed a positive confession beginning not with Ashamnu, “We have sinned,” but with Ahavnu, “We have loved.” We have loved. We have blessed. We have comforted. We have forgiven. We have repaired.
We need both kinds of confession: Ashamnu and Ahavnu.
It is not only the rabbis who understood this. Martin Seligman, who helped pioneer positive psychology in America, recommends a simple practice of remembering three good things at the end of each day. Of writing them down with enough detail to return to them later and remember what made them possible.
The practice builds a kind of spiritual muscle memory. What we remember, we are more likely to strengthen.
Pirkei Avot expressed the same insight long ago, as anyone who has ever been to a Jewish summer camp song session knows: Mitzvah goreret mitzvah. One mitzvah leads to another. Goodness builds momentum.
One act of patience makes the next one more likely. One generous choice leads us to choose generosity again. One apology opens us to greater humility. One moment of courage reminds us that we can be courageous.
That is the purpose of positive confession. It keeps the gratitude of Rosh Hashanah alive through Yom Kippur. It reminds us not only that we can change. It reminds us of all the ways we already have.
This essay is an excerpt from My Jewish Learning’s new High Holiday reader, New Fruits. It features original essays by our writers and teachers, and you can download it for a donation as little as $1. Get it here.
To sign up to receive My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter, Recharge, each week in your inbox, click here.
