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Back and Forth

12/20/2024 09:25:33 AM

Dec20

As I write these words, I am aware that we are approaching one more holiday.  That would be New Year’s Eve.  Not exactly an important Jewish holiday mind you, and certainly not our spiritual true north.  If we search them out though, there are ideas with a Jewish bent that we can discern.  The most prominent of these is that it is an opportunity to look back on the past and turn our eyes to the future.  And as with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we reflect on the what has been first, before we contemplate what is to come.

We have many ways of celebrating New Year’s Eve.  Tasty appetizers, champagne and confetti, horns and silly glasses, the notes of Auld Lang Syne, shouts of “Happy New Year!” the second the ball drops in Times Square.  (I celebrated there once.  The following year I stayed in with a good book and called it a night by 10:00pm.  You tell me!) 

Even for those of us who sleep through much of this and wake up to a new number on New Year’s Day, that look at the past envelops us.  Best entertainment stories, shows we streamed, books we discovered, people we lost.  What if we responded with our own “picks?” What made us proudest?  What was most distressing?  What seeds were sown that we hope will bloom in the coming year?

Let us remember it all so that we can toast to a year that will be better.  A year in which we too will be better.  Let us mine the past for strength and blessing as we look to the future with optimism, light and resolve.  All that has been is bound up with all that is to come.  Old acquaintance shall not be forgot.

Shabbat Shalom and happy new year!

Rabbi Rebecca Gutterman

Sun, January 19 2025 19 Tevet 5785