Rabbi Rachael Miller’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2026

On a recent Friday night, as we lit the Shabbat candles and welcomed in the love, light, and warmth of Shabbat, I took a breath as I prepared to lead our family of four in the candle blessing. But before any noise came from my mouth, our not-yet 3-year-old son started to sing: “Baruuuuuuch ataaaahhh Adonaiiiii.” I peaked from behind my hands and made eye contact with my husband. We made one of those: Wow, is he really doing this right now faces at one another, and smiled into our hands as he led us in the blessing.
It was ordinary, and it undid me a little, the way ordinary Jewish moments do when we actually notice them.
That’s really what the High Holy Days ask of us: notice. Rosh Hashanah opens with the world’s birthday and asks us to remember we are still being written into the Book of Life; by Yom Kippur we’re doing the harder work of turning ourselves back toward who we want to strive to be. Teshuvah literally means return, not reinvention. We’re not asked to become someone new in these ten days. We’re asked to come home to ourselves.
That homecoming feels more urgent this year than in years past. Being Jewish in public still asks something of us we didn’t used to have to think about, and I won’t pretend fear hasn’t crept into corners of my own home. But I refuse to let fear be the only reason we stay Jewish, and I refuse to let it be the whole inheritance I hand to my children.
The Torah gives us the instruction plainly, in words we say every single day in the Shema: v’shinantam l’vanecha, v’dibarta bam, meaning, teach them diligently to your children and speak of them. Not once a year, not only in a classroom, and not only from the bimah. Speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, when you rise. Judaism gets transmitted in the ordinary minutes, not just the sanctuary ones.
This year, my hope for all of us is small and doable: light the candles together, tell the story out loud, let the next generation watch us return. Am Yisrael Chai isn’t a slogan we sing despite our fear. It’s a promise we keep by showing up one Shabbat, one holiday, one honest conversation at a time, so that whoever comes after us inherits a Judaism worth choosing.
Shana Tova.

Rabbi Rachael Miller is the Associate Rabbi for Temple Emanu-El.