NEW YEARS

  New years come along, are anticipated and accompanied with resolutions. Usually they are meant to inspire, to reach better heights, create a better private world, to do something, anything, that would lead to a life of more meaning and depth. Most important, we should know that these earnest, well meant promises to selves are usually discarded somewhere around the second week of January and all gone certainly by March.

It is one thing to laugh at failure to keep that diet. One can laugh at the person who bought an expensive gym package who soon enough prefers to keep his chubby little self, rather than put in the time and effort to get that six pack. Oh well, another year, another resolution consigned to the dust.

However, when resolutions are made between nations, or in the minds of people who, for better or worse have captured the minds and attention of others, well, that is another story. Those resolutions, failed or kept, good or bad, determine the path of the world and have long lived consequences down through the centuries. History has shown us that.

The question that arises is this: Why do we not learn, internalize already, the truth of the historical imperative? Why do we not recall every new year that resolutions are critical to humanity. We have only to trace the increased cutting down of forests to the climate changes we are now facing, actually living with, right now. No man is an island, and no nation is an island. No one lives in individual splendor, even the survivalists who lives deep in the heights of mountains or the quiet of the deserts.

The butterfly theory of human interaction says the same thing in what, at first glance, seems ridiculous. The fact that a butterfly on one side of the earth flaps its wings and after some time there is a hurricane or some event on the other side - well, who wants to take that seriously? And yet one would be foolish to ignore it. Volcanoes erupt in the East; soon the West is breathing contaminated air. It rains in flooding splendor on one side of the earth; the opposite side faces a drought of mammoth proportions Each and every event can be tracked and traced. We are a chain, as strong or as weak as every link in that chain. No more. No less.

Tonight, Jews around the world, of all skin tones, from places all around the world, of every age, men, women, and children in every country where a Jew is to found, the issue of resolutions is of paramount importance. Over the next two days, even as we gather together with friends and families over laden tables, even, perhaps more so, in this time of pandemic, every Jew is to examine his/her behavior over the past year. Did one keep the promises made to G-d and others last year? Does one mean to improve this coming year? Has one learned a lesson of life over the past year that will add meaning, benefit for the lives of others, along with themselves?

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is not celebrated with drink and riot. No tooting of horns or the crackle of firecrackers. There is quiet broken only by the sound of people reciting prayers, singing some of them, but always, with attention to the underlying meaning and demands of this observance. The only horn sounded is the haunting sound of the shofar, calling to our souls, to heed the truth of it all, that we are meant to serve a good purpose on this planet, to help others, to leave the world a better place for having been in it. Tikkun Olam - the fixing of the world. Tikkun atzmecha - the fixing of oneself.

Happy and healthy New Year. A good year, filled with health, prosperity, joy, and goodness. For all living on this planet, Jew or non Jew, believer or not. We are all connected, the living examples of the butterfly theory of life. Let us all make a resolution to be better, contributing people this coming year, to love one another, to consider others, to accept the truth whether it is pleasant or not, and to choose our leaders wisely.

Shanah Tova to one and all.

(I will return with a new post on Thursday.)