Pondering Judaism’s annual high holidays, Rabbi James Diamond of Princeton University says they could be called the “hi” holidays because “Jews who haven’t seen each other all year gather in synagogues and temples to say ‘Hi!”‘

Los Angeles Rabbi Jacob Pressman, also witty, offers these petitions in his Rosh Hashana (new year) prayer:

“May your hair, your teeth, your facelift and your stocks not fall. And may your blood pressure, your cholesterol and your mortgage interest rate not rise.

“May you have a spouse, or a child or a friend, or a grandchild, who loves you, even though they really know you.”

Those and more somber gleanings occur among 333 varied entries in “Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information and Contemplation” (Jewish Lights), compiled by Dov Peretz Elkins, retired rabbi of the Jewish Center in Princeton, N.J. The book follows his anthology of reflections on the major holiday that follows Rosh Hashana: “Yom Kippur Readings.”

The new year’s collection draws upon traditional sources, noted modern writers including Nobelist Elie Wiesel and the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, filmmaker Stephen Spielberg and even Gentiles: Marion Wright Edelman, Al Gore, Rudyard Kipling and martyred Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Characteristically, Wiesel provides some of the most powerful words:

“To be Jewish today is to recognize that every person is created in the image of God and that our purpose in living is to be a reminder of God. … To be Jewish is, above all, to safeguard memory and open its gates to the celebration of life as well as to the suffering, to the song of ecstasy as well as to the tears of distress that are our legacy.”

Rabbi Frank Joseph reads while Fernando Russek blows the shofar during a service at Temple Beth Israel in Harlingen, Texas. Rosh Hashana begins at sundown Friday.

When Jews greet each other with the traditional “shanah tovah” (a good year), Elkins observes, they should realize that the Hebrew root for “year” also carries the meanings of “change” and “repetition.”

Thus, the greeting should signify a year of “change, of doing things differently and better. And it also denotes a year of repetition, of relearning all the old lessons that our tradition of truth and wisdom has been teaching us for many centuries.”

The new year’s aural attention-getter is the shofar (ram’s horn), in line with the biblical command, “You shall observe complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts” (Leviticus 23:24), also prescribed as the “day when the horn is sounded” (Numbers 29:1).

The overarching theme of the observance is teshuvah (repentance) and the Hebrew term for holiday period means “ten days of teshuvah.”

This is a far more profound matter than just “being sorry,” Elkins comments. The great medieval sage Maimonides of Cairo defined five separate and equally important stages in the process:

l Recognition that one has done something wrong.

l An inner sense of regret for the misdeed.

l Articulating in confessional words the personal recognition and regret.

l A vow not to repeat the sin.

l On the next occasion with opportunity to repeat the sin, one does not do so.

An old Hasidic teaching says: Every human being is tied to God by a rope. If the rope breaks but then is fixed by tying a knot, the connection becomes even closer. “Thus, errors, mistakes and failures have the potential of drawing us even closer to God.”

In Jewish lore, a new year’s ritual with medieval origins is tashlikh, throwing bread crumbs into a body of water to symbolically cast away sins.

Rabbi Richard Israel, now deceased, suggested wry variations: Throw white bread for ordinary sins, French bread for exotic sins, multigrain for complex sins, pretzels for warped sins, waffles for sins of indecision and sourdough for being ill-tempered.

Repenting for bad jokes? Throw cornbread, of course.