After the holidays
The holidays are over, and all our prayers for repentance and renewal have been filed away in God’s filing cabinets where they’ll remain until next year when the holidays return and God will be able to see how far we’ve come and if we’ve missed the mark again, and if we should be granted another year, our lives written into the Book of Life.
The holidays are over. They ended almost two weeks ago. Our sukkah is folded and packed away in the garage again. The space where it stood is now filling with leaves falling from the trees as the air turns colder, and the meals we shared within its walls are only memories. But I’m still praying as if the holidays haven’t ended, as if I’m still dreaming.
The holidays are over, and the sound of the shofar still echoes in my ears, its long blasts still piercing my soul, still giving me hope that God can hear our prayers, that our prayers are able to rise like the notes of the ram’s horn to heaven and bring a good sealing, a good year ahead, for us all. But the shofar blasts and the prayers that we sang as a congregation and that I uttered as an individual all feel like a dream now.
The holidays are over, and part of that dream was seeing after more than 700 days of prayers— miracle of miracles— the 20 hostages, still alive, released from captivity. In the moments when I watched on my laptop screen as they crossed into Israel again, it felt as if I could finally come up from underwater and breathe for the first time in two years. I could take deep breaths and offer prayers of thanks for the safe return of the living, even as I continued to pray that the bodies of the hostages still in Gaza would be returned soon.
The holidays are over, and it’s two weeks since the holidays ended and I still feel like I’m dreaming, still longing to take a deep breath without worrying about drowning in the mayhem and chaos and violence of the past two years, without worrying that the mayhem and chaos of those years will continue into the future. Maybe that’s why I still feel ill at ease, as if I’m trapped underwater, still seeking a way to reach the surface, still trying to figure out how to breathe with ease again.
The holidays are over, and I keep hoping this year will be different from other years. I keep hoping the war in Gaza will end for good. I keep hoping there will be an extended peace, and that peace will flourish between Israel and the Palestinians like the red kalaniyot that bloom across the land each spring. I keep hoping the killing will stop and the protests around the world will come to an end. I keep hoping maybe Jews in Israel and around the world will be able to live without fear of persecution or harassment for being Jewish.
The holidays are over, and saying maybe now feels like I’m saying I hope or I pray that the world will be different this year. Even though I know the holidays are over, I feel like I’m still standing in shul, still praying, still hoping that I can change enough in the year ahead to make a difference, still hoping my prayers will be heard on high and that my words can find their way into the hearts of others still dreaming like me of a better world to come.
The holidays are over, yet I still feel weeks later like I’m underwater, still trying to breathe, still praying that people will become kinder in the new year, more tolerant of differences, more understanding of what other people want, more patient of themselves and others, more willing to engage in the process it takes to make a friend, to create a lasting peace.
The holidays are over, and now that we are in the time after the holidays, we can look back and hope our names have been inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for another year. But we can’t know for sure. We can’t see the names inscribed on the page. We can’t see the page. We can’t even see the book.
The holidays are over, and we can only hope our names are written in the Book of Life, listed among all the names of those we love. We can only trust that others, like us, will try to make an honest effort to change, to treat others with more kindness, to help others in whatever way we can to bring peace to their world and ours, to make this world a safer and better world to live in than last year.