Jay Cranman’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2026

In our family, we have a saying: “Intentions don’t make memories.”
It usually comes up when someone says, “we should go to a concert sometime,” or “I meant to call Aunt Roz for her birthday,” or “We should get our friends together for pickleball.” Good intentions matter, but at some point, you have to pick up the phone and show up.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how often I fall into that same trap: I intend to call a friend, make more time to volunteer, reach out to someone who is struggling, or do something I’ve been meaning to do. And then life happens.
I suspect I am not alone.
I run into people all the time that say how much they want to help. They want to be generous. They want to volunteer, give more, or make our community a little better. But good intentions only take us so far.
Rosh Hashanah feels like a good moment to confront the distance between what we intend to do and what we actually do. The High Holidays ask us to make an honest accounting of how we’ve lived the last year.
My work at JF&CS gives me a front-row seat to some of Atlanta’s most challenging moments. I see how quickly an unexpected expense, a diagnosis, or a family crisis can change someone’s life. But I also see what happens when intentions become action. A volunteer gives a morning to mentor a child. A donor decides that a problem affecting someone else is worth investing in. A therapist stays with a family during a difficult moment. A care manager becomes such an important part of a client’s life that she finds herself sitting with the family at the funeral.
These acts rarely feel heroic to the people doing them. They simply decided to show up.
As I think about what being Jewish means in this moment, and what I hope we pass to the next generation, I keep coming back to this. I want my family, and our community, to understand that Judaism is not simply something we believe. It is something we do.
We see. We care. We act.
That is a challenge I want to take into the new year myself. To make the call instead of thinking about it. To make time instead of saying I will. To show up for the people I love and for the community I care about.
There is no shortage of good intentions in our community. My hope for the new year is that we act on more of them.
Because intentions don’t make memories.
Shannah Tovah.

Jay Cranman is CEO, Jewish Family & Career Services Atlanta