All of these ideas have left their mark on the Maĥzor and appear in our prayers, especially in the central section of the Musaf Amida. On all other festivals, there is one central blessing, Kedushat HaYom, “the special sanctity of the day.” Uniquely, Rosh HaShana has three central blessings, Malkhiyot, Kingship; Zikhronot, Remembrances; and Shofarot, verses about the Shofar. These correspond to the sentence (not found in Tanakh, but pieced together from biblical phrases), “The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord will be King, forever and all time.”

Malkhiyot refers to the present. Zikhronot is about memories of the past. Shofarot is about the future. The shofar is always a signal of something about to come: the imminent arrival of the king, a warning of impending danger, or the sound of a trial about to begin.

Teshuva sensitizes us to the full significance of time. There are those who live purely in the present, but their lives have no overarching meaning. They react rather than act. They travel with no ultimate destination. They are “like chaff blown by the wind” (Ps. 1:4). To be a Jew is to live poised between past and future: the past and future of our individual lives, of our ancient but still young people and of humanity as a whole.

Teshuva tells us that our past does not determine our future. We can change. We can act differently next time than last. If anything, our future determines our past. Our determination to grow as human beings – our commitment to a more faithful, sensitive, decent life in the year to come – gives us the courage and honesty to face our past and admit its shortcomings. Our teshuva and God’s forgiveness together mean that we are not prisoners of the past, held captive by it. In Judaism, sin is what we do, not what we are. Therefore we remain intact, able to acknowledge our failures and then move on.

My predecessor Lord Jakobovits made a profound comment about Rosh HaShana. Given that it is the start of the Ten Days of Repentance, surprisingly it contains no explicit confessions, no penitential prayers. These form the text and texture of Yom Kippur but not Rosh HaShana. Why so? Because, he suggested, teshuva is driven by two ­different mindsets: commitment to the future and remorse about the past. Rosh HaShana is about the first, Yom Kippur about the second. Rosh means “head” and the default position of the head is looking ­forward, not back. The placing of Rosh HaShana before Yom Kippur means that our determination to act better in the future should be prior to our feelings of remorse about the past – to which we might add that this is why we blow the shofar on Rosh HaShana. The shofar, too, turns our attention to what lies ahead, not behind.