God knows we’re imperfect. Our Judaism can be too.

A Jewish life doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Sometimes, a little is the beginning of a lot.

photo: Salvatore Favata/Unsplash

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There is a strange irony in the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

We spend this period thinking about becoming better people, yet the entire architecture of these holidays begins with an admission that we are never going to get everything right.

We will make mistakes. We will lose our patience, break promises we made to ourselves, say things we regret, neglect things that matter, and repeat behaviors we swore we had finally left behind.

Then, remarkably, Judaism gives us another year — not necessarily because we succeeded perfectly in the last one, but because we didn’t. That is what teshuvah is built for.

Teshuvah is one of those remarkable Hebrew words that contains more than one idea. In everyday Hebrew, a teshuvah is an answer, a response, a reply. In the religious tradition, it means repentance and is connected to shuv — to return. Perhaps those meanings belong together more than we realize.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur confront us with a question: Who are you going to be now? Teshuvah is our response; an answer expressed through the way we choose to live differently. Judaism asks a question of us every year, and our lives become the reply.

And perhaps that same philosophy should apply not only to how we act and behave, but to how we practice Judaism itself. One of the greatest barriers to Jewish life today may be the belief that if we cannot practice Judaism properly, consistently, or completely, there is little point in practicing it at all.

If I cannot keep Shabbat every Friday evening and Saturday, why bother? If I am not going to fast for the entire 25 hours of Yom Kippur, why fast at all? If I only go to synagogue a few times a year, what is the point? If I do not understand Hebrew, keep kosher, know the prayers, observe every holiday, or follow every mitzvah (commandment), then perhaps I am simply “not religious.”

Once Judaism becomes a binary choice between observant and not observant, many Jews understandably put themselves in the second category and stop trying.

But maybe that is the wrong choice we have given ourselves. Jewish life does not have to begin with everything. It can begin with something. Maybe you do not celebrate Shabbat every week. Start with one Friday night a month. Light the candles, pour the wine, buy a challah, invite friends over, and sit around a table together.

Maybe next year once a month becomes twice a month. Maybe eventually twice a month becomes every Friday night. Or maybe it never does. The monthly dinner still matters. One Shabbat a month is twelve Shabbats a year that otherwise would not have existed.

The same principle can apply to almost every part of Jewish practice. Maybe turning your phone off for all of Shabbat feels impossible. Put it in another room for dinner. Give yourself three hours every Friday night when nobody at the table can reach for a screen whenever conversation slows down.

Maybe fasting for all of Yom Kippur is not something you can or want to do. Fast until noon. Fast until 3 p.m. Skip breakfast and lunch. Make the day different in some other intentional way. That is not the same thing as fully observing the traditional fast, and we do not need to pretend that it is. Judaism has standards, and its rituals have structures and meanings that deserve to be taken seriously.

But there is a vast difference between acknowledging an ideal and believing that anything short of that ideal is worthless.

Do you know how many Jews eat “kosher style” without following every rule of kashrut — and still think of themselves as keeping kosher? I know quite a few, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I go to a weekly Torah study, and sometimes I catch myself pulling out my phone because I get bored or distracted. Does that make the hour less meaningful? Of course not. I am still there, still showing up, still listening, still absorbing, still learning. Imperfect participation is still participation.

Perfectionism has a hidden trick: It makes doing nothing feel principled. We tell ourselves that if we cannot do Judaism properly, we will wait until we are ready. We will start keeping Shabbat when life becomes calmer. We will learn more Hebrew someday. We will go to synagogue when we have children. We will become more involved after we get married, move houses, change jobs, or somehow become the future version of ourselves who finally has the time and discipline to do everything correctly.

But “someday” has a remarkable ability to become decades.

There is another option: Do Judaism imperfectly. Stumble through the Hebrew. Forget the blessing and look it up. Light the candles late. Order takeout for Shabbat dinner. Go to synagogue and have no idea what page everyone is on. Read one paragraph of Torah. Say the Shema before bed once this week. Put your phone away for two hours on Saturday afternoon. Learn one Jewish idea and then, when you inevitably fall out of the habit, start again.

The point is not to champion ignorance or halfheartedness. The point is to understand that imperfect practice has somewhere to go. No practice does not.

In fact, small Jewish practices have a way of expanding. You begin hosting one Friday night dinner because it feels manageable, and then you realize you actually look forward to Friday nights. You start putting your phone away during dinner and discover that you enjoy being unreachable. You learn Kiddush because you are tired of reading it phonetically. Then you learn Modeh Ani.

One ritual leads to another, or at least more depth, more repetition, more consistency. Practice becomes habit; habit becomes attachment; attachment becomes identity.

This may be a more realistic model for Jewish continuity than expecting millions of Jews to suddenly overhaul their lives.

Imagine instead if millions of Jews simply decided to do one more Jewish thing this year than they did last year. Someone who currently has no Shabbat dinner begins having one every month. Someone who already does it monthly begins doing it twice a month. Someone who goes to synagogue only on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah adds Purim or Simchat Torah. Someone who knows no Hebrew learns one prayer. Someone who has never studied Torah begins reading the weekly parsha (Torah portion) for 10 minutes on Sunday morning.

None of these changes looks revolutionary on its own. Multiplied across a people, they are enormous.

The Jewish calendar itself seems to understand that human beings change this way. Every year we return to Rosh Hashanah. Every year we return to Yom Kippur. Every year we confess many of the same failures and make many of the same promises. Judaism does not cancel Yom Kippur because last year’s Yom Kippur failed to make us perfect. It gives us Yom Kippur again. Try again. Return again. Give a different answer this time. Move another few centimeters or inches. Go a little deeper. Become a little more intentional than you were before.

Perhaps, then, the question during these Days of Awe should not simply be, “Am I doing enough?” That question can quickly become overwhelming. A better question might be: What is one Jewish thing I can genuinely commit to doing this year? Not the fantasy version of you. The actual you.

Start somewhere, and do it imperfectly. Twelve imperfect Shabbat dinners are better than 12 perfect Shabbat dinners that exist only in your imagination. A few intentional hours of Shabbat can become the beginning of something much larger. One Jewish practice can become two. What begins this year as monthly may become twice monthly next year and weekly a few years after that. The purpose is not to water Judaism down until it asks nothing of us. It is to give ourselves a realistic path toward allowing Judaism to ask more of us over time.

Rosh Hashanah asks the question. Yom Kippur asks us to answer it. What kind of Jew will I be this year?

Maybe our teshuvah — our response — does not need to be a dramatic promise that we will suddenly become perfect Jews. Maybe it can simply be a decision to move, however imperfectly, in a Jewish direction.

Choose one thing. Begin.

And when the shofar sounds again next year, perhaps each of us will discover that the imperfect Jewish life we actually lived became far richer than the perfect Jewish life we kept postponing.

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