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Author's Chapter Notes:
Shana tovah! Today is very auspicious, in that it marks both the beginning of the year 5783 in the Hebrew calendar *and* the birthday of our very own Maxine Abbott. I couldn't let such an occasion pass without fic.

For background for this Jewish!Jim fic: The Days of Awe are the ten days of repentance and renewal beginning on Rosh Hashanah (New Year?s) and ending on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). Tashlich is a ritual conducted during this period, usually on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, in which sins are symbolically cast into a body of water, often in the form of bread. While true atonement can only be attained by seeking the forgiveness of G-d and those you have wronged, it is an important part of the process of repenting and purifying oneself. Jewish holidays run sundown to sundown, and the first night of Rosh Hashanah is typically marked by a family gathering and a big meal in which Ashkenazi Jews dip apples in honey to symbolize a sweet new year.

Jim is staying out of his own head these days.

It’s one of the joys of finally being with Pam that he hadn’t anticipated. He’s spent so much of the last four years guarding every word, analyzing every move. Every conversation with Pam had to be reviewed for double meanings, every late night talk with Karen had to be lived at least twice to help keep track of his cover story, check-in phone calls with his mom and Larissa were always about more than they were really about. Too many nights lying awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if anything he’s done has revealed too much, too little, if he’s a little closer to being with her, a little closer to getting over her, if anything is ever going to change…

It was exhausting, more than he realized while he was in it.

Now Jim can just… be. And wouldn’t you know it, it turns out Pam loves him just as he is, unfiltered and unrestrained. Because Pam loves him. (Pam loves him!)

If he’s not especially eager for the Days of Awe, it’s just for that reason. All that self-reflection… who wants to dive back into that?

X X X

But last year had been the first time in his life Jim hadn’t been home for the High Holy Days, and he’d spent so much time that fall missing his dad and feeling like a terrible son (and a terrible friend, and a worthless piece of crap who never deserved to have someone like Pam love him, no wonder she couldn’t). He’s not going to do that again.

So he’d told Michael he had a bunch of sales calls (he’d avoided that conference room meeting for four and a half years and he wasn’t going to break that streak for anything), endured Pam’s teasing (“You get so much more Jewish when there’s food to be eaten or work to be skipped, Halpert”), dug out the yarmulke from his bar mitzvah and spent the morning in the uncomfortable folding chairs Temple Hesed used for additional seating, murmuring along with the ancient prayers.

The right decision. The only decision, really. And the way his father wrapped his tallit-covered arm around his shoulders when he sat down next to him, like he was still a little kid, felt like a great way to start a new year.

Still, as Jim stands on the bridge over the Lackawanna River with the rest of the congregation, enduring the rabbi’s too-long paean to the value of tashlich as a “physical separation of the sin from the self” and “an opportunity to consider one’s wrongs outside of the confines of the service structure,” he feels himself falling down the same old rabbit hole.

He has, he knows, a lot of wrongs to consider. And something the rabbi said this morning is stuck in his throat, a painful lump: “one cannot truly atone without sincerely dedicating yourself to not repeating the sin all over again.”

It’s not like Jim is really religious or anything. Hell, by the traditional definition he doesn’t even count as Jewish, something that has always been a quiet relief to his Adamcyzk grandparents. But by that standard, he couldn’t possibly have atoned for so many things for… years.

And there’s plenty in there he really would like to. Plenty of people who ended up as collateral damage along the way to his happy ending.

Except… now he has his happy ending. Jim woke up this morning spooning Pam Beesly, just like he’d always dreamed. Her clothes are in the top drawer of his dresser and her ring is in a shoebox on the high shelf of his closet.

So maybe things can be different. Maybe he can do more than sulk and beat himself up, knowing he’s going to do the same shitty things all over again.

Maybe now he can put it behind him.

So he takes the bread and repeats after the rabbi and starts to cast it into the water.

Bread for Karen, and every lie he told her, every one of the thousand cuts he killed their relationship with. For Karen, who deserved someone who could keep his promises and got conned into thinking Jim Halpert was that guy.

And while he’s at it, bread for Katy, who was never going to be the love of his life and ended up dropped flat on her ass on her now-ex’s office boat trip for trying to be. Bread for Brenda, and Jennifer, and Amanda, and Sara-without-an-h, and every other woman he used to get over or get at or get away from Pam Beesly.

Bread for Larissa, who was endlessly patient with him through endless pathetic whining. And for Mark, who was less patient but as supportive as a bro can be through night after night of mindless video games and mind-blotting drinking and far more moodiness and sulking than could’ve been pleasant to live with.

Bread for his mom, and how sad he saw his own sadness made her. “A mother is only as happy as her least happy child,” she always says, and that’s been him for a long damn time. He’s going to do his best to make it up to her. (Maybe with a curly-haired green-eyed grandchild.)

Bread for his dad, who he’s let down with how adrift he’s been. Maybe now he can make him proud.

Bread for Tom and Pete for all the crap he’s pulled on them to get his mind off Pam. And, no matter how much Jim hates acknowledging it, for Dwight and all the times he’s messed with him just to have an excuse to talk to her, or to take his mind off not talking to her, or to help him keep his eyes off her, or to take out his frustration with her on someone, or…

Well. Maybe he can’t fairly commit to stopping any Dwight prank-related sins. But he can try to keep it to just those times his desk-mate really asks for it. And maybe be a little more understanding while he’s getting over Angela.

Bread for Roy, and all the coveting he did of the life Roy had… and for unwinding it.

Bread for Pam.

For all the snippy comments when she wouldn’t give him what he wanted. For all the times she needed a friend and he was something other than one. For dropping a bomb on all her plans. For leaving her without saying goodbye. For how cold he was when he came back to Scranton. For taking the olive branch she offered him after the pepper spray incident and snapping it over his knee. For the week she had to wait for him to come back after her Beach Day speech.

He has more to make amends to Pam for than anyone.

He also has a much better idea of how to do it.

X X X

All of a sudden, Jim feels… lighter.

You’re supposed to ask people for forgiveness, he knows that. It’s not enough to ask the world or G-d. And he doesn’t think he has the courage for that, not yet. But now he can see how he might start, and actually mean it. He can see how the vicious cycles he’s put everyone around him through might truly be behind him.

He can be better.

He crumbles the last bits of his bread into crumbs, and watches the water take them away.

X X X

“You seem really good, son,” his father says as they walk to the parking lot.

“I feel really good, Dad.”

“I’m glad.”

He bear hugs Jim, and he feels like a kid again. “You tell Pam we say hi, okay?”

X X X

He can hear Pam clattering around his apartment when he walks in the door, and he smiles to himself. He’s still giddy at the idea that she’s just letting herself into his place, making herself at home.

He finds her setting out candlesticks on his little kitchen table, on top of a tablecloth she definitely brought from elsewhere, because he for sure doesn’t own one.

She looks up at him almost like he’s caught her red-handed at something.

“So I know we were supposed to do all this last night, but I didn’t think of it until this morning, and it turns out brisket is not that easy to make, so I’m picking up some takeout from that barbecue place you like at Washington and Third Street. I did manage to get some challah, though, and we’ve got plenty left from apple-picking, and I bought some honey from a farmstand near the bakery. That’s right, Jim, not just any honey… locally sourced honey. That makes up for doing it the next day, right?”

He crosses the room, takes her in his arms and kisses her. Slow, deep, practically lifting her off her feet. The way he used to dream about.

He tastes the honey on her lips.

“Well,” she says, flushed. “Maybe I stop by the farmstand more often.”

“Maybe,” he says. “You’re cute.”

“I promise I’ll get it right next time, Jim.”

Next time, he thinks.

A happy and sweet new year indeed.

Chapter End Notes:
Call this somewhere between Fun Run and Dunder Mifflin Infinity. Yes, in the strictest sense of the word, I established that Jim isn't Jewish in A Real Mensch, and Gerald wears a kilt to their church wedding, and yet here he's Jewish on his father's side. But in the strictest sense of the word, Andy's parents both did and didn't divorce. I'm just saying, why does Greg Daniels get to do something I don't?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAX, and a happy and sweet new year to you and to you MTTers all.

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