In the past several months, I’ve started re-engaging with my jewish heritage. As part of that, my partner and I light the candles and sing on Fridays for Shabbat. This weekend is a little special in that it is the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. Often referred to as the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah is also considered a spiritual reset. In the days leading up to it, Jews participate in diverse rituals to sort of wipe the slate clean on everything outstanding: mistakes we’ve made, promises we didn’t keep, embarrassing situations we can’t stop thinking about. One ritual some Jews follow involves listening to the sound of a shofar (a horn) after having thought through the things from the year they want to release or conclude — the sound of the horn symbolically bringing resolution to it all.

Reading about the theme for Shabbat this week, one question from a Jewish scholar stays with me: Do you desire to live your life with responsibility for the world?

For better or worse, but I hope better, re-engaging with Judaism has strengthened how I feel about activism, justice, and peace. I feel like I’ve forged an even deeper commitment to making things as good as I can for my community and the larger world in which we live with whatever tools I have available in me to do so.

While I’m not religious, I’m going to take the next few days to be particularly thoughtful about the past year, the memories I might want to wallow in or the ones that make me shudder when I remember having done them, and I am going to ask myself to let them go. It’s a lot like a therapist might have a patient practice CBT: it’s another way to regulate your spoons before they get used up on things that don’t matter enough. What doesn’t matter enough? We get to decide that. We can choose. Every day can be a new day, a new chance for us to choose each other and to choose peace.

A reminder: Deligitimizing Jewish or Palestinian connections to the homeland is a bad look. Peace is the right look. Let’s focus on that.