By Betzy Lynch in La Jolla, California
In the days leading to the New Year,
I have been feeling the heat.
How it lingered,
how it dried the earth,
how after enough days of it
even my bones began to feel dry.
I found myself longing for something
to break through the heaviness,
to reach those dry places
and breathe life into them again.
But this year,
the New Year arrived quietly.
Rosh Hashanah entered with Shabbat.
The gates opened.
The work of teshuvah began.
And the shofar waited.
Perhaps I needed that silence
before I could truly hear the sound.
Because when the shofar finally sounded today,
I did not hear only a call.
I felt the breath.
Breath pushed through a narrow place,
an ancient cry
that seemed to travel deeper
all the way into the marrow.
Tekiah.
Wake us up.
Shevarim.
Help us hear what is broken.
Teruah.
Give us courage not to turn away.
May we carry these sounds
through the days ahead,
softening what has hardened,
awakening what has grown tired,
breathing Divine breath into our dry places.
Hadesh yameinu k’kedem
make fresh our days.
Not by erasing the year behind us,
but by helping us carry its lessons forward.
May regret deepen into wisdom,
failure open us to humility,
and gratitude teach us to notice
the blessings already before us.
And perhaps this is how we make room
for shalom.
Not peace that asks us to forget
what is broken or unfinished,
but peace spacious enough to hold it all.
For shalom is not simply another blessing.
It is the vessel that holds our blessings
joy and sorrow,
what is whole and what is broken,
who we have been
and who we are still becoming.
May we cultivate that vessel within ourselves,
making room to recognize what is good,
to hold what is precious,
and to receive the blessings
that have been there all along.
As the echo of the shofar carries us
toward Yom Kippur,
may it put new marrow in our dry bones
and new breath within us.
May we enter the year ahead
not beginning over,
but beginning again.
Shanah Tovah u’Gmar Chatimah Tovah.
May we be inscribed and sealed for a good year.
*
Betzy Lynch is the chief executive officer of the Lawrence Family JCC.