I was about to comment on how rare it is for me to reference contemporary music. Then I decided that, before I did so, I should just check the publication date of the song I nod at in the title of this week’s post. I hope you’re sitting down: July 1968, which, however you count it, is over 54 years ago. As if I needed depressing even more, Revolution is as far back in history now as Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser was in July 1968. (Incidentally, it’s worth reading the lyrics of this 1914 patriotic war song, to wonder at its light-hearted optimism at the start of World War I, a mood that was so far out of step with both reality and, I believe, the British public at large.)

But I digress…and we find ourselves this week at the exact point in this season in the Jewish year when digression is the one thing we don’t want. As we approach the end of the seven days that carry us from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, from the New Year to the Day of Atonement, what we want is to focus on the matters at hand.

At a Q&A session that we held after morning services in our synagogue last Shabbat, the moderator invited us all to share what resolutions we had made for the New Year. My initial reaction was to reflect that New Year resolutions are surely a non-Jewish phenomenon. (Ed. Note: Actually, that’s not true; my initial reaction was: ‘In your dreams! I’m not sharing my resolutions with anyone!’ – and judging by the number of people who passed, I’m guessing I wasn’t the only person who reacted in that way.)

However, as I listened to the ten or twelve people who were happy to share their resolutions, I started wondering about the whole phenomenon, and I have come to the conclusion that, far from it being a non-Jewish thing, there is something in the whole experience of making and striving to keep resolutions that is quintessentially Jewish.

By way of introduction, let me present some of the resolutions that were voiced on Shabbat. There were several that were specifically related to raising the resolver’s level of Jewish observance: to take on more religious learning; to strive to pray more often in a minyan and not alone. Some were more broadly concerned with general behaviour (although these were also very much in harmony with ideas central to Judaism): to perform more acts of simple charity; to be a better neighbour. Still others were even more general: to find a husband who embodies the qualities I am seeking; to lose 10 kilo.

This was the moment at which I started wondering generally about the whole point of resolutions. When that last resolution was shared, half of those present nodded or grunted acknowledgement, and you could almost hear a general murmur of: ‘Been there! Done that! Repeatedly!’ Discussing this with Bernice afterwards, I was not surprised to hear her reject, for herself, the whole concept of resolutions: either you decide to do something and do it, or you don’t…and don’t. Resolving to do something sets up an entire extra unnecessary layer, that adds nothing.

There is a level at which I agree with Bernice. I certainly remember vividly a decade or more of resolving to give up smoking, and either never getting any further than the resolution, or making a half-hearted attempt, which fizzled out within a day or two. Then, one day, with no specific trigger, I woke up and decided not that I was going to stop smoking but that I had stopped smoking, and, lo and behold, I had. Since then, I have always maintained that stopping smoking is the easiest thing in the world; you just have to want to.

And yet…At another level, I believe that there is a genuine significance in making resolutions. A resolution is a declaration that we make to ourselves (and, if we choose to, to others, but that is not the important part) that we are going to change. The act of making that declaration is an affirmation that we have the power and ability to change. That is a profound affirmation.

There is a famous Victorian Christian hymn – All Things Bright and Beautiful – written by the Anglo-Irish Cecil Frances Alexander. She was tireless in her charitable work for the deaf and dumb, the poor and the sick. There is a verse in the hymn that was subsequently rejected by the Church, and omitted from standard hymnbooks. The verse reads:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

This explicit endorsement of the class system, elevating it to the level of Divine will, is certainly alien to Judaism. Blind acceptance of one’s fate is not the Jewish way. The resounding message of this period of the year is that every person’s fate is in his own hands. If we genuinely repent our sins, then God will gladly accept our repentance. Repentance, prayer and charity, we declare in the High Holyday liturgy, avert the evil decree.

On Yom Kippur itself, most people that I know, whether they are traditionally religious or not, to a greater or a lesser degree, step back from their everyday life and make for themselves a space where they can reflect on the place that they are in. Speaking personally, in a ‘good’ year, where I feel I have been able to make that space and experience that reflection, I find myself, at the end of Yom Kippur, feeling that I can indeed work to become a better person in this new year.

For those of us who lack the strength of character of Bernice, or at least for myself, the act of making a resolution can help to sustain that feeling over the coming days, as the pressures of everyday life rush back in, and I feel the spiritual force that I experienced on Yom Kippur dissipating. A resolution translates the general feeling of ‘wanting to do better’ into a specific action item to be carried out. It also, as I stated above, affirms my belief that I can change.

I could make the argument that making a resolution only to fail to carry it out is a waste of time, and is merely an opportunity to make myself aware of my inadequacies. As the congregant said last shabbat: ‘My resolution is the same resolution I make every year – to lose 10 kilo.’ You could see that as just a repeated failure, and even as satisfying what was apparently not Einstein’s definition: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.’

However, I would argue that if, every year, we reach the point after Yom Kippur where our faith in our ability to change is renewed, where we have shed our cynicism and our despair, and where we genuinely believe that this year we can indeed become a better person, then that is something to be celebrated rather than mocked. Regardless of whether we succeed in converting the resolution into life-changing action, the mere act of faith contained in the resolution is a thing of value. I say we want a resolution!

Raphael, meanwhile, seems untroubled by the awesomeness of the period we are currently going through.