MICHÈLE MARR:

We might see the world draw with a breath of bright hope if the whole of its people were to take to heart the spirit of Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan this weekend.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish observance of the birthday of creation, is designed to give us a second — or even a 5,767th — chance to clean up our act. Its two-day span begins this year at sunset tomorrow, the beginning of the first day of the seventh month of Tishri on the Jewish calendar in the year 5767, and will end at nightfall Sunday.

The date was passed on from Adam to Enoch, from Enoch to Methuselah, from Methuselah to Noah, from Noah to Shem, from Shem to Abraham, from Abraham to son after son, throughout generations, down to ours. Like a person’s birthday, Rosh Hashanah kicks off a new year.

It doesn’t start like our secular New Year with a countdown to the slide of a glittery ball down the flagpole on top of the building known as One Times Square. It doesn’t end the next morning with a hangover chased with ibuprofen.

Instead, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jews all around the world traditionally gather by a body of water with fish in it — a river, an ocean, a lake or a pool — and into its currents they cast away their sins.

The fish, with their dependence on water, symbolize humankind’s dependence on God, living under his watchful eyes that, like the eyes of fishes, never close.

Rosh Hashanah inaugurates not just a new year but also the Jewish High Holy Days. It’s two days in 10 that pave the way to Yom Kippur, the most sobering of holy days in the whole of Jewish religious experience.

Meant to go beyond to-do and not-to-do lists of often throwaway resolutions to eat better, watch less TV or lose some weight, Rosh Hashanah is “a time to take a full, personal moral inventory,” Rabbi Stephen J. Einstein of Congregation B’nai Tzedek says.

According to Aish HaTorah, an international organization that provides answers to the question, “Why be Jewish?,” the High Holy Days are the grand finale to a “month-long process of coming back to God.”

Islam’s Ramadan, which will begin just as the sun goes down on Rosh Hashanah this weekend, can be described in much the same way. Like Christianity’s Advent that precedes Christmas and the 40-day season of Lent before Easter, both the Jewish High Holy Days and Ramadan are journeys to coming clean and closer to God.

All of these spiritual seasons incorporate the disciplines of fasting and abstinence, not only from food and drink but also from destructive behaviors such as envy, excess, self-righteousness, gossip and apathy. They encourage reconciliation with those who have wronged us as well as with those to whom one has done wrong.

During these times, Christians, Muslims and Jews ask for forgiveness from friends, family and God. These are times to make amends for the harm one has done and to vow not to cause such harm again.

Rabbi Einstein sees the High Holy Days and Yom Kippur more as processes than events. He has likened them to having one’s teeth cleaned. The dental hygienist chips away to remove all the bad stuff that has built up on our teeth, he says. Spiritually, we have to chip away all the nasty stuff that has built up in our souls and hearts. “We have to work at it,” says Einstein, “until we’re ready to open ourselves up.”

Whatever one’s faith, prayer and fasting, introspection and remorse, forgiveness and charity are the tools brought to the task. God knows how badly, in this autumn of the year 2006, the world needs them.

Maybe it’s the shortening of summer’s days as the Equinox encroaches; maybe it’s the lengthening of our country’s days at war in Iraq; maybe it’s the war’s escalating casualties and ugliness; maybe it’s the rising shrill of election campaigns; maybe it’s the sum and more of all these things, but on the threshold of so many holy days that promise hope and renewal, I find myself tempted to blow raspberries at them all.

But it’s not their fault. They didn’t carry us here. If we all pitched ourselves headlong into them, could they carry us out?

“A call to conscience … a wake-up call,” that’s how Rabbi Einstein characterizes the High Holy Days. The Jewish scholar Maimonides urged his readers, “Awaken, ye sleepers, from your slumber and ponder over your deeds; remember your Creator and go back to him in penitence … Look well to your souls and consider your acts.”

His wisdom echoed that of an earlier Jewish scholar, best known to us as St. Paul. “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Years later, in much the same vein, Muhammad would advise his followers, “Keep yourselves far from envy; it eats up and takes away good actions, like fire eats up and burns wood.” And “No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”

Maybe we would see the world draw with a breath of bright hope yet if in these coming months the whole of its people were to take these messages to heart.