by Student Rabbi, Sam Allie
Shalom l’kulam. I’m so honored to be preparing for 5786 in community with you all, to be diving into new roles and relationships while we dive into this next year. Still quite new myself as a student rabbi, I’ve been reflecting lately on this idea of newness – what it means for something to be “new.” I had been thinking about the fact that we say “new year” in English, but Rosh Hashanah is more accurately “head of the year.” We might be generous and translate it as “first of the year,” but even that’s a jump. This is something we know, but maybe something that we don’t consider seriously enough. So I wondered: is it new, the year? And what does it change to say yes it is or no it’s not new? And this brought about another consideration, about how the newness of the year and my newness relate…
Jewish time – more often than not – can be understood in terms of cycles, and we can see this far beyond “the Head of the Year.” Each week is a shabbat cycle, and the shabbat cycles themselves are part of the yearly Torah cycle. Rosh Hashanah is part of the Days of Awe cycle but also part of the new years cycle alongside 1 Nisan, 1 Elul, and Tu b’Shvat. We also follow the harvest-pilgrimage cycle of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. And the dizzying and beautiful thing about cycles is that their beginnings and endings aren’t so distinct. So perhaps Judaism doesn’t see a distinct separation between “last year” and “the new year.” Perhaps newness isn’t about a break from and start of something else, but rather it’s like a feedback loop with repetition and familiarity but also distortion and change and dynamism.
Of course, there are radical breaks in the flow of things too; there are certain inevitable instances in life that feel and look and act like a major disruption. The clearest examples of this are birth and death. We might also think of significant medical diagnoses or major political changes in our society or the world – things from which it feels like there’s no going back. There’s a radical break from what was and a radical re-ordering of what is, and what is – is new.
This is a different kind of newness, and yet we refer to many of these instances as cycles too. There’s the life cycle which spans from baby naming to tahara (washing of the dead), and there’s the news cycle on a micro-scale and the cycle of empires on a macro-scale. So maybe newness can be a radically different, changed, never-before-seen thing, and it can also be a familiar, dynamic, flowing thing. Maybe the important part isn’t the quality of newness
but the fact that our awareness of something new means awareness of the cyclical nature of things.
What a powerful shift in perspective. Newness is not (necessarily) about comparing what was and what now is or will be; rather it’s about appreciating all that was and is and will be. Newness is taking three steps back and three steps forward, then bowing; it’s neither the steps out nor steps in but the whole dance, the whole act of noticing creation unfold. We can – and certainly we do – hope for newness that is pleasant to us. We hope that the next year – and our relationships and roles within it – are fulfilling and just and joyous, and we can work hard to achieve these goals. But perhaps most importantly, we can notice and appreciate what was and is now and will be. This is the connecting thread between all that’s “new,” calling upon us to notice and appreciate. May it be so.
L’shana tova u’metukah, tikateivu v’tichateinu!