What early Rosh Hashanah tells us in French

Rosh Hashana comes early this year. So yearly, in fact, that the Days of Atonement fall almost exactly on the days of French parents’ atonement: la fameuse rentrée. The famous French-style back-to-school season. Or should I rather say, the infamous one?

The beginning of the new school year falls on the head of the French educational system like a mighty harvest used to fall upon the heads of Soviet kolkhozniks: no one was ever ready. The machinery was always broken, the barns needed repairs, and the kolkhozniks themselves least of all expected that whatever they had sown would now be ready to harvest. That’s at least the impression you got as a typical Soviet city kid watching the Soviet evening news.

The same impression you get as a French parent listening to other parents’ tales over a cup of espresso or a café au lait on the first days of September at a typical Parisian café terrace.

Many schools give out the list of school supplies during the first week of school. Racing with your kids after everything they might possibly need for elementary, middle, and high school during the whole year is a national French activity. Shrugging your shoulders about it is another one.

Waiting for the public dance, art, and music schools to give your kid a schedule after the school year has already commenced (this schedule cannot be changed unless you provide a valid reason signed by another public institution or a doctor; your psychologist doesn’t count), so that you can start juggling the schedules of private dance, art, sport, and music activities for your three or four kids—and these schedules can eventually be adjusted, except when they can’t, for various reasons—is the reason why France is one of the world leaders in wine consumption.

Back to school in France is chaos. But it is a beautiful chaos.

Because your kids grew this summer, their skin is tanned, their hair is bleached by the sun, and their eyes carry the sparkle of summer adventures. Because you reconnect with your friends, with your life, with your routine, you enter a new year full of hope and joy: the kids are growing, the kids are learning. And all this happens in that quiet and fragile beauty that is so typical of the first month of fall. Which is the beginning of the end.

Yes, it is chaos. Just like the creation of the world. And this is where we are back to Rosh Hashana.

Rosh Hashana is a spiritual New Year, not a calendar. It is the moment when we renew our relationship with G-d. We go back to school. We go back to what we want to be. We recommit ourselves to love and good deeds, just as we recommit ourselves to art, dance, music, and sport activities.

And just like with all these activities, at the beginning of the path you think to yourself: Oh my G-d, how am I going to make it? And by the end of the year, the way you made it—the way you made it happen—is already a story you tell the following September on a terrace over a cup of dainty espresso to other moms like you: well-rested, suntanned, breathless, overwhelmed, and excited all at the same time.

But back to Rosh Hashana.

For me, as a musician, this is a very special holiday. Secretly, it is a musician’s holiday for me. Not because of the importance of the shofar, though that is undeniable. But because the symbols of Rosh Hashana and the sweet year we wish for each other are apples and honey.

Two kinds of sweetness: the natural sweetness of apples and the sweetness of honey, which is a product of very dedicated and very well-coordinated labor.

In a way, these are the ingredients of the musician’s path: the sweetness of a natural gift, a talent, a sensibility, something. And hard work that lasts a lifetime. The apple of the gift, the honey of perfecting it, making it worthy of those who will honor you by coming to listen to you.

And by the time you climb onto the grand stage to delight your audience with your apple and honey, part of that honey will be the old honey of your mother, who, on a September morning, was racking her brain trying to make sure you got to your dance class without being tired, thirsty, or with wet hair after the pool.

Just like somewhere in her cupboard, trust me, is that old little pot of honey you gave her for Rosh Hashana in first grade. You made it at that Sunday school she drove you to.

We accumulate our Rosh Hashanas. Or rather, like the creation of the world that it celebrates, Rosh Hashana never stops. We just mark it two days a year.