It is once again the season of the biblically ordained High Holidays when Jews attend synagogue services in large numbers and absent themselves from work and school. As a youngster, I never looked forward to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur because they represented the end of summer and a return to school. In those halcyon years, my tape of life ran at ultra slow speed because I envisioned an almost infinite number of years ahead of me. But now that same tape is running on fast forward. My financial adviser uses a euphemism, but I am not fooled: “You have a somewhat shorter horizon line than in the past.”

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the

Rest of Us.”)