Ray Alyssa Rothman’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2026

What Rosh Hashanah Means to Me
When I was a child, Rosh Hashanah was a visceral experience I absorbed through my five senses; the sight of the new dress my mother would buy for me to wear to synagogue; the touch of my father holding my hand in prayer; the smell of the round challah symbolizing the circle of life; the taste of my grandmother’s chicken soup; the primal blast of the shofar. But once I became a bat mitzvah, I saw that it was not just about the dinners, the friends at synagogue, or the new dress. By college, it had become something else entirely: a chance to stop the clock and consider the year behind me, the people I might have hurt, what I could have done better, the year ahead, and the person I wanted to become.
I have a busy job, family life, and social calendar, and most of the time, I move from one thing to the next without looking up. It is rare for me to pause. Rosh Hashanah lets me stop and look beyond the temporal, reminding me that time marches on whether I pay attention or not.
That pause is the respite I need to look honestly at the past year: the things I got right, the things I’d take back if I could, and the people I’ve neglected when I shouldn’t have. It isn’t about guilt. It’s about being insightful enough to notice, and then committing to experience the coming year with a little more empathy, patience, intuitiveness, and tact than I managed before.
Then there’s the continuity, which is really the heart of it: family, friends, meals, the same prayers I’ve heard my whole life. All of it reminds me that I am one small link in a long chain. For millennia, generations have sat down at this time of year and done more or less what we’re doing. That thought comforts me.
If I had to name the one thing Rosh Hashanah gives me, it’s the sense that life is fluid. Whatever kind of year it’s been, we still have the time and the choice to change, to make amends, and to stay hopeful.
So Rosh Hashanah, to me, is a real beginning and not just a date. It reminds me that another year is not something I’m owed, and I must try my best to make it count.

Ray Alyssa Rothman is a commercial real estate broker who focuses on land. Her side business is her nonprofit, Kibbitz & Konnect, the premier in-person social network for Atlanta’s Jewish singles community (www.kibbitzkonnect.org).