Our friends at Tablet Magazine have put together a great list of Rosh Hashanah resolutions from a wide range of well-known Jewish figures. Each response offers advice for the coming year and some things for all of us to think about, and do, over the next 12 months.

Here are our five favorites—you can check out the rest over at Tablet.

Dr. Ruth, sex therapist

The one thing you must do in the New Year is pay greater attention to the humans next to you than the gadget in your hand. No matter how much you love your phone, it will never hold your hand or make your heart flutter. If you want to have a productive year, if you want to feel the warmth of human contact, if you want to marry or stay married, have children and get the most that life has to offer, put your gadgets down and connect to those around you with your mind, your arms, and your heart.

Mayim Bialik

The last time I was in Israel was two years ago. I’ve almost gone a few times since then but just have never gotten around to it. This past year has seen an increase in my Jewish learning, observance, and sense of connection to the State of Israel. I had a serious car accident a month ago, and since then I’ve felt a very strong pull to go back to Israel. I would go so far as to say I feel like I need to go to Israel this year to heal from the accident, to heal from a particularly rigorous year emotionally, and to put my feet back on the Land.

Jonathan Ornstein, director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, Poland

Go to Auschwitz. Feel sad. Feel angry. Contemplate the unimaginable loss. Weep for the souls of the victims. Say “Never Again.” Then go one hour down the road to Krakow and learn the real lesson of the Holocaust. Go meet a growing, vibrant, optimistic, pluralistic, forward-looking Jewish community that refuses to allow itself to be defined by tragedy—the one community in Europe where it is getting better, safer, and easier to be Jewish every single day. Learn the lesson of the Holocaust that the Krakow Jewish community has learned: The strength of the Jewish People lies in defining ourselves by what we do, not by what is done to us.

Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker

My goal this year is to use the word “ham-handed” in a TV review. I also want to cook 4 percent more (I’m a terrible cook), wear eyeliner, buy a bunk bed for my two boys, go see more standup comedy, read something fancy like Montaigne, and convince my husband to grow a mustache. Plus, write notes to people when I admire something they wrote (like Nora Ephron and David Rakoff did) and gossip more.

Joshua Cohen

My New Year’s resolution is straight-ahead: Stop imposing Hallmark® goyisher narrischkeit on Jewish tradition. It isn’t New Year’s. It’s Rosh Hashanah.

Happy 5773, people.

(Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

What To Do in 5773 [Tablet Magazine]

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• Fred Karger, the gay Jewish Republican presidential candidate, is a Top 10 Power Gay Republican.

• Rachel Shukert on the under-watched television show GCB: “as if Gilda Radner was starring in a Tennessee Williams play.”

• Etgar Keret, Shalom Auslander, and Dara Horn discuss Jewish fiction.

• Omg, our girl Shoshanna totally namechecks Camp Ramah on Sunday’s episode of Girls:

The post Daily Jewce: Hitler’s Farts and Cocaine, ‘Girls’ Go to Camp Ramah, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

Oh thank God. Ok, maybe Shalom Auslander himself might not approve of the formulation of my excitement for his upcoming novel, but so it goes. Auslander is arguably our generation’s budding author of books that rage against organized religion and God. For a while, perhaps he still does, Auslander sported a silver chain around his neck with the Hebrew word Acher, the name of the most infamous Rabbinic Apikores/heretic. The older generation, justifiably so, takes offense at this childish middle finger in the form of a necklace, but for me, and perhaps for many of my generation, something about his desire, no, his need to infuriate people speaks to us. We might disagree with his methods, but we can associate with his frustration.

Yes, Auslander, perhaps, does leave his family laundry hanging on the line with a little too much pleasure, but who can judge him for his scathing anger when he creates such brutal beauty? Either way, aren’t you just happy to welcome him back to the form of long literature, not just short (still angry) articles, but a novel with the already cynical sounding title: Hope: A Tragedy.

Besides the visceral excitement that comes along with an eagerly awaited novel, looming over Auslander’s work lies the biggest question of where can he go from his previous output? Or, essentially, can this talented writer move past his personal anger, or will he forever stay mired in the rage of his past wounds? Philip Roth moved past Portnoy’s Complaint to write larger, grander novels about less self-involved topics. Hopefully, Auslander, with his arsenal of talents will transcend the so far self-imposed limitation on his writing and move into the wider spectrum of the literary world, whether Jewish in content or not.

Auslander recently helped create trailers for his new book that consist of him asking his freinds if they would hide his family during the Holocaust. Here’s Auslander himself, courtesy of New York Magazine, on the upcoming novel, “Well, the book is about the futility of hope, in a way. And the danger of hope. At a certain point you go, the sun is not coming out anymore. If I could get that way with life in general, I would be much happier, and that is kind of what the book is about.”

From the ways he describes the novel, a book that deals with the repercussions of collective guilt of the Holocaust on the 2nd generation, I don’t know what to think about our previous question. The book’s scope seems wider, but its stated theme of relinquishing hope engenders worry about Auslander’s ability to overcome his personal unhappiness. Despite my qualms, these trailers are both offensive and hilarious, and I’m rooting for him no matter what.

The post Shalom Auslander Looks For A Holocaust Hiding Spot appeared first on Jewcy.

Prediction: One day Shalom Auslander will find a new schtick. He will probably start writing books like Danielle Steel and become a bazillionare.

Until that time comes, he’s got an interview up at Kveller where he makes a bunch of witty self-hating Jew jokes, nods to the holocaust, and talks of therapy.  At this point we think he’s contractually obligated to discuss these things, but we continue to laugh.

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