Listen, Richard Kaplan is transcendent. His intellect has expanded into spirit, and his spirit takes wing on voice. In "The Jewish New Year" Kaplan takes very specific traditions from Eastern Europe and North Africa and runs with them like streamers across a broad America.

Make no mistake – this programming is more than "a Jewish thing". People everywhere understand.

Because producer Russ Jennings elegantly arranges Kaplan – songwriter, pianist, ethnomusicologist, and teacher – with Estelle Frankel – author, psychotherapist, teacher of meditation, and student of the Kabbalah – and she is as unique and astonishing with word as he with song.

What you get is chicken soup, stirring, that comes out of the radio soulful and fragrant.

Frankel's storytelling reveals the intricacies of Rosh Hashanah, commencing with the ram's horn, the shofar, whose cry must break hearts open to hear the cry even of our enemy. Only then is there "wholeness that comes after the brokenness life inevitably brings us – and that is the New Year."

Kaplan sings from the Song of Songs, "The voice of my beloved who knocks / Open to me", and Frankel softly offers the "spiritual alchemy" that can make mistakes into gifts – renewing time, beginning again.

At Yom Kippur, aloneness transforms to connectedness, and we remember our original face.

"The Jewish New Year" presents a poignant message of hope, ripened in humanity. It's the blessing of a fresh start that there's no need to wait for.