Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit has over 25 years of experience in spiritual and congregational leadership, organizational consulting and training, educational arts, writing, recording, teaching, and performing. A singer, liturgist and recording artist with five original CDs, he is also a founding member of Shabbat Unplugged, co-director with Rabbi Marcia Prager of the Davennen Leadership Training Institute, and a spiritual director and trainer for the ALEPH Hashpa'ah Jewish spiritual direction training program. Reb Shawn, who has led High Holy Day services at Elat Chayyim/Isabella Freedman since 2008, is author of Offerings of the Heart: Money and Values in Faith Communities, and co-editor with Harry Brod of a new book on Jewish men's issues Brother Keepers: New Essays in Jewish Masculinities (Men's Studies Press, 2010). He is currently the Director of Outreach and Tikkun Olam for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. Visit  for music links, articles and more information.www.rabbizevit.com Rabbi Shawn Zevit will be leading Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services at Isabella Freedman next month!

Rosh Hashanah is known by many names. "The Jewish New Year," "The Birthday of the World," "The Day of the Sounding of the Shofar Blasts" and "Yom Hazikaron—A Day of Re-Membering."

Our teacher Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi says that remembering is to member again: to bring back the important pieces of our Selves and arrange those pieces so that we are in right relationship with our Selves.

If we are looking to renew ourselves and do the teshuvah work of forgiveness, why "re-member?" Why not just make "New Year's resolutions" as is the secular custom in our society? The intersection of renewal and creativity invites us into a relationship with the Divine that is a dynamic process, not a static conceptualization.

The word God comes from the German "Gott" which means to invoke. As Reb Zalman and Rabbi David Cooper remind us, God is a verb and not a static noun. Perhaps this insight invites us to look at teshuvah as reaching for fulfilling our Godly potential by invoking the life we are capable of—and not settling for what has been—no matter how long or how entrenched our behaviors or circumstances. This requires us to re-member the parts of ourselves we have forgotten—or put into exile—buried beneath fear or simply become habituated to in unhelpful ways.

We say the words we do these Awesome Days as part of the legacy of our people and to invoke the possibility of change and to stir our creative thinking in responding to the world around us. We say these words not to lull ourselves into a trance or to simply feel good that we showed up to an annual gathering, but to break open the very mindset that would have us return a year from now having remained stuck in our place of struggle and at a distance from the needs of the world around us.

Could it be that the road to teshuvah, to really making the changes we yearn for this year, will be discovered in the unexpected moment? Perhaps in a creative thought that the words inspire within you or the conversation you have with a friend or a stranger over kiddush? Or, like Hagar, the place we feel we are bottoming-out that is in fact a place to begin again if we would only look up from the pain of our circumstance to see and remember what we are capable of and the possibility is in front of us?

Be on the lookout.

As we will share our High Holy Days on retreat this year, let the liturgy and the melodies of this time of year wash over you. We will help all of you who join us to keep noticing your own heart, the voices and hopes of those around you and the opportunity that presents itself to apologize for a hurt you participated in, or to express an appreciation you have withheld. It is this creative force within us and the possibility in each moment that can present us with the opportunity to begin to turn ourselves around—teshuvah: to re-turn, to turn around to face each other and ourselves.

In our focus on Zikaron/Remembering, we will explore what you want as the story of your life to reveal: the you that you had forgotten you are, and the you that you long to be in a Jewishly-welcoming, inclusive, traditionally-informed and innovative framework. Reb Arthur and Reb Phyllis, Simcha and I look forward to sharing the journey with you!

Isabella Freedman is an allstream Jewish organization where people connect with themselves, Judaism, the environment and each other. We offers diverse programs and retreat experiences that renew and sustain the vibrancy of contemporary Jewish practice. Located only two hours from New York City and three hours from Boston, we provide glatt kosher dining, year-round country lodging, miles of hiking trails and an organic farm.