Seemingly everyone in my circle has been reading, and rereading year after year, the excellent book by the late Rabbi Alan Lew, This Is Real, and You Are Totally Unprepared. Not just unprepared for a speech or an exam, not just “appling” (Rabbi Lew’s chosen word for freezing in a moment of decision) over what to make for dinner when you forgot to shop, but unprepared for the pivotal, life-and-death, soul-searching, fate-in-the-balance moment of judgment and redemption that is the “awe-filled days” of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
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