Monday, September 17, 2012

שנה טובה 5773!

It is daylight now, a cool autumnal Rosh Hashanah morning. The sun has just cleared the 

Boston skyline and found the blue sky blameless. Sigh - I am not quite as innocent but 

then, who is? The roommate is up, shaking off the Monday blues to get ready for work. 

Meanwhile I am happy to note all my professors have responded to my notice of absence 

from their classes today with "Happy New Year!"'s. It is still disorienting (although less so 

than in previous years) to me how the secular world goes on during Rosh Hashanah. Yet 

this year - 5773 - there is something else. From within the disorientation a sense 

of special divergence, a distinguishing difference, emerges. I am appreciating how this day, 

these Days of Awe, this Tishri, and this year of 5773, exists outside the norm. It imbues 

each moment with a profound and celebratory quality that I cannot quite define, nor am I 

sure I want to. I feel no need to analyze it more than that; I am at peace and joy just being 

in it.    


Goals

Embrace more question marks. (One of my rabbis is quoted as saying the question 

mark is the quintessential Jewish symbol. Couldn't agree more.) Keep feeling my feelings 

(rough one, that). Trust more. Love more. Read more Jewish texts - liturgical, Holocaust, 

philosophy, Israeli fiction and non-fiction. (Fun one, that. There are not enough hours in a 

day.) Learn and speak Hebrew, Biblical and modern. Get more present with and my 

congregation (another rough one, as I am socially awkward to a fault. And yet people keep 

asking me to sit with them. See Goal #1.) And, always, keep walking that narrow bridge...
                                                                   
                                                                          * * *

I do not know who you are, where you come from, what makes you laugh and cry or how 

you love. But may you be inscribed in The Book of Life and your new year be sweet...



Call Your Zeyde


Yes, I know it is a year old. But its joy has no expiration date...

Rosh Hashanah Rock via AISH



(Mitt Romney's people called. His Rosh Hashanah message is forthcoming...)

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