Standing in the kitchen, my apron and my one-year-old son dripping with honey cake batter, I wonder to myself: “Is this really how the accused prepare for a trial at the Old Bailey?”

For us Orthodox Jews, New Year, which begins tonight, is not an occasion to get drunk or kiss each other at midnight.

At New Year, teach the rabbis, God judges every human being. From a young age, we have a clear message drilled in to us. Whatever awe and fear we would feel going in to court, we should feel it a hundred-fold going before the “judge of judges.” Whatever energy we would put in to preparing for litigation, we should put far more in to righting wrongs before giving account to God.

Now admittedly, when first presented with this idea as a six-year-old at Manchester’s North Cheshire Jewish Primary School, it fell pretty flat as none of us had any idea what a court case was. But as we got older, it became second nature that the month preceding New Year is spent putting our affairs in order... and baking traditional holiday honey cakes.

These dual responsibilities saw me dash last night from the oven to the synagogue – cakes on to the cooling racks at a quarter to midnight, penitential prayers at midnight.

This is the nature of the Jewish festival season, which brings four festivals in the next four weeks. On the one hand, we are occupied with lofty themes. On the other hand, it’s a season of elaborate meals which double as jolly family gatherings.

This may appear odd, but to us, it’s completely normal. In the West, it is widely believed that religion is something best “done” where we pray. But for Jews, synagogue is just a small part of our religious life.

Many of our faith’s obligations are carried out in the home, be they lighting the Sabbath candles each week, keeping a kosher kitchen (where milk and meat are separated, and cooked in different pots and pans, according to religious dietary laws), or marking the festivals as prescribed by Jewish law.

Therefore, in the festival season when the theme is “teshuva” – a Hebrew word often translated as repentance but which actually means “return” to religious ways, promising this return as we stand in synagogue is not enough; we need to make religious observance a focal point of our home lives. If we try to leave God behind in synagogue at the end of the service, say our rabbis, we’ve missed the point.

Meals, when blessings are recited, Biblical ideas discussed and guests invited, are to Judaism displays of religious devotion. So keen were the rabbis of the Talmud on this idea that with the Jerusalem temple destroyed, they dubbed the dinner table the new altar.

So, when we get home from synagogue on New Year, throwing elaborate feasts of traditional delicacies to honour the festival is one way of us showing that our teshuva does not just consist of words uttered in synagogue, but also of a desire to boost the centrality of Jewish law and customs in our families.