Rosh Hashanah 5769
Today is Rosh Hashanah which is the celebration of the Jewish New Year. This day which is considered one of the most significant of the Jewish religious holidays kicks of a period of reflection which ends next week onYom Kippur . I like many of my friends was raised in a family that went to services on these High Holly Days but as I married and started a family the logistics of life, temple memberships, and child care got the better of my drive to attend services.
Traditionally on these holidays most Jew do not work, rather we spend the time in reflection about life. Just because I have not managed to make it to services does not mean that I do not reflect and wish to be connected to my faith on these holidays.
Judaism is much about traditions and while one may at anytime reflect on life and your purpose/focus in that life it is on these days betweenRosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we as a culture stop and reflect on our lives and our place in this world.
It is in business terms it is the start of our business planning period. It could be said that on Rosh Hashanah we take a day to celebrate the new year and to reflect on where we are today and what we have achieved in the last year. We spend the next week planning for the coming year and reviewing our core values. We take measure of our performance in life against the core values of our ancestors. We take time to take responsibility, reflect on past errors, assume control of our lives and business and change course if necessary.
Judaism has always struck me as a very pragmatic religion. Everything is done with good purpose if one looks deeply enough. This holiday creates a tradition of stopping ones day to day life and taking the time to take measure and reflect on what one is doing. The tradition is ingrained and many of us find it hard not to head the call of theShofar (the rams horn which is blown on this holiday) which calls the start of this reflection.
It strikes me that the concept while simple is missing or mis-shaped in the business world. While budgets are done and business plans are written/updated those plans often lack grounding in the faith of those businesses. How many businesses, or families for that matter, manage to truly reflect on the past and the future of their businesses and to compare those to real and culturally (the culture of the business or family) driven values.
Mostly we do what we do by pattern and necessity. Rosh Hashanah is more then pattern and necessity, we do not do this just because someone tells us to, it is ingrained into us a need to heed the call to participate in the process.
What will you do in the next year with your life and your business? When will you next take the time to pause and reflect on where you are and where your going? How will you measure the passage of time and be sure to stop again when a year has past? When you do pause do you have real core values to measure yourself against?
Time is fleeting, as we all get older and the challenges of life hit us faster it is hard to seriously take the time to look at where we are and where we are heading. If one fails to take a mandatory rest stop one may soon discover they somewhere they never intended and indeed are not happy to be.
So no matter what your faith, culture, business or purpose it is good to have a tradition which brings pause and gives you a chance to look around and make choices not out of need but out of calm intentional and reflective thought.
