As we approach the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, that is coming up in a few days, I have been thinking about new beginnings. I have been thinking about how every year we talk about starting over. A new year, a new cycle, a chance to look back at where we have been and think about where we are going.

But the question that is bothering me: is it really new? And I am trying to think about it, and maybe you can help me. We take a regular Friday and decide that this particular Friday is the beginning of a new year. Or December 31st, an ordinary Thursday, becomes New Year’s Eve, and then at midnight, it is a celebration, and Friday become a brand new day of a new year.

You know, nothing really changed. The earth keep on turning. The clock kept on moving. We simply decided to give that particular moment a meaning. And maybe that is what the new beginning really is.

Think about a new relationship. You meet somebody new, and suddenly, you feel like you are starting over. But you bring your entire history with you, including your baggage. Your previous relationship, your experiences, your mistakes, your expectation. Hey, you are still you. So is it a new beginning? And the answer, perhaps, is yes and no.

Perhaps it is a new person, a new relationship, a new experience, new possibility, but you are still you. Or think about moving to a new city: new house, new street, new neighbors, new restaurants, new routines, new people. But you wake up the next morning, and you are still the same person, right? You have the same memories, the same experiences, the same fears. You are just you.

New job, you retire, new home, going through divorce, fall in love again, something has changed, but you haven’t. And maybe that is okay.

So perhaps a new beginning isn’t about becoming somebody else. Maybe it is about giving ourselves permission to do something differently. That is where I think these cycles we create and give meaning to are useful. And that is what I like about Rosh Hashanah. It gives us a reason to stop for a moment and take inventory, self check. What happened this year? Who came into my life? Who left? What worked? What didn’t? What do I want to carry with me to the next year, and what do I want to leave behind?

But there is also another side of the argument. Sometimes I think we put too much pressure on new beginnings. We expect too much from new beginnings. We think a new relationship will fix something inside us. We think that a new job will make us happier. A new year will also somehow make us a new person. Ah, you know, it won’t. We go with ourselves.

So maybe the real beginning is really a decision. A decision to call someone you haven’t called, to forgive, to try something different, to say yes or finally say no. The calendar gives us the moment, and we give the moment its meaning.

And that is what brings me to music, because music works in a strange and wonderful way. A song might be 30 or 50 years old, or even 100 years old, but every time you hear it, it has the possibility of becoming new again. “Oh, I haven’t heard that for a long time.” “Oh my god, I remember that song.” You know what happened when this happen? We attach our own memories to music.

A song become the song you heard on your first date, or another one become when you were driving on the coast, another become your parents’ song, or another remind us of a wedding, a vacation, a friend, somebody who is no longer here, perhaps. We take the song that was written by somebody we never met, in a place we may never have visited, and we make it part of our lives.

And then, there is new music. You hear the song for the first time, no matter what language it is, and I said that many times, it is the vibe that you get from a new song. You hear the song, and you don’t have any memory attached to it yet. But maybe tonight, you will. Maybe something we play tonight will become connected to this particular moment in your life. I hope so.

So as we approach a new Jewish New Year, perhaps we don’t need to completely start over. Maybe we need to look at what we already have, decide what is worth keeping and what need to change, and then give ourselves sort of a permission to begin again.

And tonight, we will do the same thing with music: some old songs, some new songs, the regulars, and some stories. Stay with me for the next couple of hours.