Sounding the shofar in the synagogue on Rosh HaShanah is the high point of my year.

No other mitzvah in Judaism is so dependent on a personal skill or entails such high drama. And, at least for me, no other mitzvah renders quite the same sense of achievement and fulfillment.

I often hear people talk about the awakening power of the sound of the shofar — how awesome a moment or how inspiring an experience it is for them to hear it. For me, it is both a very public and an intensely personal experience.

In the past several months I have had some version of the following exchange several times. I tell a friend that I’ve just finished a book on repentance, and they respond that they find the subject of forgiveness very interesting. It’s psychologically so much healthier to forgive than to hold on to resentments, they say, signaling that they appreciate the importance of the subject.

The confusion between repentance and forgiveness is widespread, it seems, and also very telling.

What can Tiger and Toyoda teach us about teshuvah?

With Selichot, a service of repentance-centered prayers said in preparation for the High Holidays, coming on the night of Sept. 4, is there anything we can learn about saying “I’m sorry” from public figures?

The airwaves have been full of apologies this year. But unlike soon-to-be former BP Chairman Tony Hayward or South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, we usually don’t say “selach li,” “forgive me,” on TV in front of a world audience.

What flavor is your Jewish New Year?

For most, since childhood, Rosh HaShanah begins with apples dipped in honey — a custom meant to ensure a sweet new year.

Over time, the practice has yielded a kind of “ritual comfort food.” But what if we like change? What if you don’t like apples, or honey, or find the combination a drip too saccharine for your tastes?

If the quality of time we choose to celebrate is sweetness, I want to revel in a different kind of sweet.

Steven Levine is matter-of-fact about his family’s upcoming plans for Rosh HaShanah.

At the dinner table with his wife, Leslie, everyone will share resolutions, round-robin style. He will take the day off from his job at the U.S. Olympic Committee and his three children won’t go to school in order to attend synagogue.

But only on the first day — it is no two-day holiday for this family.

“It’s all cost-benefit analysis,” says Levine, 45, a risk-management director from suburban Denver.

In time for High Holy Day gift-giving, pastry chef and teacher Paula Shoyer has published her first cookbook, “The Kosher Baker” (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England), seeking to “breathe fresh life into pareve desserts and breads.” Shoyer is the editor of Susan Fishbein’s cookbooks “Kosher by Design Entertains” and “Kosher By Design Kids in the Kitchen.”

Many recipes contain amusing anecdotes, beginning with one from Shoyer herself, found in the preface. “In the beginning,” she writes, “my mother baked once a year with cake mixes during Passover.” The story continues, with the author explaining how the book came to be. Nearly one-fourth of the recipes can be mixed in one bowl and are ready for the oven in 15 minutes.

In time for High Holy Day meal preparation, Manischewitz offers some new products including the new all-natural Vegetable Broth that has no MSG and is fat-free, joining chicken, beef, and low-sodium chicken broths in 14- and 32-ounce sizes; all-natural ready-to-serve soups in five flavors, Matzo Ball and Chicken Soup, Matzo Ball and Chicken Soup Reduced Sodium, Chicken Noodle Soup, Chicken Noodle Soup Reduced Sodium, and Chicken Soup and Rice; and all-natural, low sodium Roasted and Peeled Chestnuts from the Season brand, an all-natural, low sodium product. Tam Tams with no trans fats come in boxes with 20 percent more product for the same price. For a full list of products visit www.Manischewitz.com.

Teiglach came along with Tina Wasserman when she moved to Dallas in the 1980s.

Wasserman, a cooking teacher and the food columnist for Reform Judaism magazine, didn’t literally transport clumps of the sticky pastries whose dough is wrapped around nuts and simmered in honey syrup. But among her most cherished possessions, she packed her recipe for the traditional Rosh HaShanah sweet hailing from Lithuania.

“No one had seen it down here,” said Wasserman, the author of “Entree to Judaism: A Culinary Exploration of the Jewish Diaspora (URJ Press, 2010), until she served the dessert to her new friends.