Rabbi Marisa James' Drashah for Shabbat Nitzavim, 2025

“I don’t think I have ever started a new year with the feeling that I’m starting totally from scratch, or from any truly kind of fresh beginning. Every year I understand a bit more how impossible it feels for me to start a new year with a truly clean slate. Every year, I am more inclined to look with tender pity at the people who think that on the first of January or the 10th of Tevet, they are going to start getting up and running at six o’clock every morning, which we know isn’t going to happen. Maybe it happens twice, and then that’s the end, but — we’re starting a new year, but it doesn’t mean our bodies and hearts and minds can reset to their factory original settings to start something that is 100% new. Instead, it’s more like starting with the letter bet. We don’t know what the year will bring. We want all the possibilities of trying again, all the possibilities of returning again that we feel most strongly are possible at this time of year, but we also each year, let’s be honest, have a little more wisdom of what is it that we carry with us? What rolls over into the new year with us? What do we not fully leave behind we still attempt to return to who we are, to what we are, to where we are, right, that teshuva that we crave, but we understand that there’s a little knapsack that’s coming along with us that isn’t empty.“

Rabbi Marisa James gave this drashah on Friday, September 19 / 27 Elul. Watch her full talk above. 

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