On Rosh Hashanah we plead with God to go on running the world's business and be our King.
Our little self-examinations and personal soul-searching are not for Rosh Hashanah.
We have the whole month of Elul, which comes before Rosh Hashanah, to devote to repentance and to return to God.
Rosh Hashanah involves something else.
Having finished the world's annual stock taking, we are ready, through forgetting and remembrance,to start a new page of history and welcome God.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Seven Lights by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz