“Happy New Year!”

This is what I said to the rowing team on Thursday morning after I had hurriedly gathered a bagel and a banana after morning practice before I ran to shower and meet my carpool to temple.

I love High Holy Days. Just like you love Christmas and New Years. I get the same giddy feeling in the days leading up to it, and the same surreal attitude while actually experiencing it. And I’ll tell you why; because it’s the same. The way that hearing Christmas carols makes you feel like you have warm hot chocolate running down into your stomach, High Holy Days songs and hymns make me feel the same way. Except its not hot chocolate its honey, and apples. The Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur are our most important holidays. This being said, they are very different then the majority of America’s most important holidays. Not only because they are fundamentally different because of the difference in religion, but also because they are treated very differently by those of us not celebrating the given holiday.

Everyone gets a break for Christmas and New Years no matter who you are or if you observe either of those holidays. I’m not saying that it is good or bad or one way or another, its just simply how it is still. This being so, it creates a very different feeling around the other holidays people celebrate. For me, Rosh Hashanah will always be associated with playing hooky from school. It’s something special, a once a year tradition that set me apart from the rest of the kids in class. I remember during elementary school my best friend and I would get picked up by one of our parents from school to attend services. Something that sticks out in my mind is the way that the other kids would be jealous of us getting to miss school. Something like “Awww no fair….” or “Man, I wish I was Jewish…” was not an uncommon thing to hear. While it didn't bother me at the time and in fact I probably just rubbed it in my classmates faces, it does come back to haunt me today.

Around that time, the days that we would get off of school were the only times that I felt special. The rest of the time I was the one who didn't celebrate Christmas. I was the one who didn't bring candy in their lunch the days after Easter because I hadn’t gotten any. I was the one who was left out. And while some of my classmates might have argued that that is okay because while we were at Rosh Hashanah, they were the ones being left out,I would have to tell them that it just isn’t the same.

The very definition of exclusion inhibits it from ever working in the minorities favor. And so instead of emphasizing the fact that I indeed did get an extra day off, I would now encourage my younger self to try and communicate to my classmates that they were not only being insensitive, but they were also, subconsciously of course, changing the relationship I had with something that was very important to me. Obviously it was not intentional, but the interactions that I witnessed and had with peers, made High Holy Days into something that people liked the idea of because it got them out of school, instead of something sacred. Even though I could have shut this out and saved myself, I was relatively mainstream when it came to taking in what my peers were constantly projecting. I developed this altered relationship with High Holy Days where it was something that was only cool because it got me out of class and when it came to actually participating and making it into something that was mine, I was hesitant.

As the years went on I eventually realized that peer pressure is a hoax and everything turned out okay, but it would have saved me a lot of trouble from the beginning if I was able to be proud about who I am and why I do the things that I do.

Around the High Holy Days I try to say Happy New Year to everyone that I see. Partially because I am very happy that it is Rosh Hashanah, partially because it makes more sense then saying Shana Tova to a bunch of undeserving goys, but also partially because I am looking for a certain reaction out of them. I am mostly looking for something along the lines of “Oh, I’m not Jewish.” To which I love to respond, “Oh that’s okay. I am.”