How do we face our own death? This is the question that Moses is presented with in our sidrah and that we are encouraged to ask ourselves at this time of the year, during the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. The rabbis provided a very powerful metaphor for these days.

It is on Rosh Hashanah that God opens two books: the Book of Life and the Book of Death. All those who are wholly good are immediately written into the Book of Life and all those who are completely bad into the Book of Death. Everyone else, and the rabbis teach that this is basically everyone, are kept in suspense during the ten days until Yom Kippur. 

In those ten days, we have a last chance to turn our life around for another year before God makes the final decision of writing us into one or the other book on Yom Kippur with the seal affixed during Succot.

This is why we repeat during the Amidah for the whole time period of the Yamim Noraim the words, “Remember us for life … and inscribe us in the Book of Life.”

I do not believe that the rabbis intended the concept to be taken  too literally. They were well aware of the fact that far too often bad things happen to good people. However, the imagery of choosing between the Book of Life and the Book of Death is a powerful metaphor: at this time each year our Jewish tradition reminds us that, even if we cannot control when our life will draw to an end, we have the power to choose how we live the days granted to us.