This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation Book

Jews always look at me funny when I say the high holidays are my favorite of all Jewish rituals. To be honest, it has something to do with the fact that it always falls around my birthday when my thoughts naturally turn again to the fact that I continue to survive my long dead twin sister, whose life recedes further and further into the past with each passing year.

This book explains why the high holidays are, or should be an incredible time of reckoning. It probably took a rabbi steeped in Buddhism like Alan Lew to get to the heart of why the "Days of Awe" should take an entire community through the most intense process of coming to grip with their lives. A process so huge, that as Lew admits, you can't possibly do it all in the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. You can't even do it in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah. The high holidays serve as a reminder to continue the process of coming to grips with your own mortality and learning to be aware and present in your life throughout the year.

Anyhow, yes this is one of those self-help type spiritual books that I usually can't stand reading. But this particular book was right on target at a time when I was really thinking about which book we were all going to get inscribed in for this coming year. Now, if I could only find a rabbi steeped in Buddhism, I might start going to schule...