Soon the Jewish world will celebrate Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New year. This is a time to reflect on our lives and responsibilities in order to gain clarity regarding how we can be co-authors with Divine Source to write the next chapters of our lives as individuals and as a collective. The approaching New Year is also a time to check in on our closest relationships in order to gain personal insight and to heal fragmented relationships. Rosh HaShana offers rituals that symbolically allow us to discard the jagged aspects of the previous year, to cast off the experiences and emotions that we are not proud of, as a means of making personal amends.
We are living in a liminal moment in human history. We are on the threshold of something new and unknown. Liminality is frightening because nothing is predictable. At present it often seems that traditional solutions or wisdom are no longer applicable. We all know deep down that we cannot continue doing business as usual. This feels exacerbated by ideologies and movements that seem to want to destroy all of the human structures that our society is built upon. Some of these movements hold difficult truths about deep inequities in our world, but do not offer sensitive and sensible solutions. They focus on a segment of a problem and often unjustly single out groups of people as the root cause, which only generates rage and fear potentially stoking more violence.
All too often I hear people talk about a “new normal” when in our post-covid reality we encounter so much that is not normal. It is not normal that so many people are unhoused. It is not normal that to get through our day-to-day lives we need to take our planetary health closer and closer to breaking points; to muddle along attempting to adjust to frightening conditions we know are portents of an impending doom. It is not normal to hear, during an election debate, for a candidate seeking to be “leader of the free world”, to employ scare tactics about vulnerable people eating others’ pets. The level of rage and escalating violence on our planet is unacceptable and cannot be discounted as the “new normal.”
Rosh HaShana is a mini restart but before we hit the restart button and begin our year anew, we must examine to the depths of our beings the yuck that we produced over the past year and work towards sacred reconciliation with self, with others, and ultimately with Creator.
Our planet needs a restart but before we can hit that button we need to honestly explore our shared values. We cannot build humanity up without laying a foundation based on the values, ethics and morals we know are true. At this liminal moment we cannot rely strictly on the usual sacred texts and sages from our diverse faith and ethical traditions. This is a time to dig deep inside ourselves and experience the revelation that we are all created in the image of the Divine and use that realization to explore what values resonate as true and integral.
Perhaps the first step is to do no harm. Check in with others with an open heart and mind. Reflect on and cast off old ideas that don’t generate wholeness and harmony. Respond to what arises, even the scary difficult stuff, utilizing our aspirational values. Know that each of us as individuals and as collectives can co-author, with Divine Source, humanity’s next chapter.
Rabbi Harry Brechner is Rabbi of Congregation of Emanu-El in Victoria, B.C.
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking at https://www.timescolonist.com/blogs/spiritually-speaking
* This article was published in the print edition of the Times Colonist on Saturday, September 28th 2024
