Time is not a train of cars hitched one to another. A year is not dragged along by the year preceding. The present is not hitched tightly to the past. The future is not enslaved to the present. Rather, every year arrives fresh from its Creator, a year that never was before and could never have been known before its arrival. That is why we call Rosh Hashanah “the birth of the world” in our prayers. The past has returned to its place, never to return. With the blowing of the shofar, the entirety of Creation is renewed. From this point on, even the past exists only by virtue of the present.