This time of year in September always gets me

This time of year always hits me hard. 

The seasons are changing, the sun is moving lower in the sky, and the light is not as intense. The colors of the leaves are starting to fade, as they begin to die, even as they turn intensely colorful just before they drop. 

Yet, it is a new year. 

Classes started for students, and for me as a teacher, so there is always the excitement of new beginnings even as they bring challenges. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year when we begin the cycle again during the period of the “High Holy Days,” has just passed. As I enter another year of teaching, I prepared for those holy days for the past month, the month of Elul, that precedes Rosh Hashanah. It was a long span of reflection, of accounting, that I began before the semester started. It has been the second week of classes, and I feel pulled between my active work duties and the spiritual work where I contemplated when I may have hurt others or disappointed myself. So I spent my time, taking account of not just the past year, but of how I spend my life.  

Family and friends matter most to me. The last several years since my husband died has left me thinking about him and our marriage. Having been writing my memoir for a long time, I have long reflected deeply on my life. 

I also throw myself into work mode—research, writing papers to present at conferences, and essays to publish. I often become frantic, anxious that I won’t meet a deadline. Yes, I work obsessively, and so I do not know how, or if, I can retire. Being busy distracts me from other worries—like that America and the world seem to be going in directions I find very unsettling. But teaching and writing are also the ways—my gift-- that I believe can help my students have a clear moral compass to navigate this stormy world and make it better. After all, they are the future. Is that not what my rabbis say we are obliged to do—tikkun olam—repair a broken world? It is a Hebrew phrase, but it is not only a Jewish value. 

There is much work we need to do and it seems endless. I think of the poets I teach. John Donne in his “Satire 3,” disturbed by religious doubt and wars over religion, who wrote that “Truth” stands on a “huge hill, cragged and steep,” and to reach her is the work of a life time. His metaphor suggests we are always struggling, always seeking. Donne is talking about spiritual work that must be done now. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” ends with Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden into the fallen world, told not to despair, but to work. “Add deeds” to your faith, the angel Michael tells Adam, even though Adam just learned the world will only get worse and worse. 

So, here I am in the Autumn of my life still teaching after many decades. Almost everyone I know my age has retired. But I do not feel old. I do not feel done. Sometimes I ask myself, is it vanity that keeps me in the classroom? No, it is commitment to “do the work.” For teaching, at its best, is not simply communicating knowledge, but soul work, helping young people become stronger and prepared to do their best. 

During this Rosh Hashanah, even as I felt pulled by supposedly “worldly” and “spiritual” obligations, I know my two lives intersect, strengthen each other, and give me purpose.