A Rosh Hashanah message
By Sydney Perry

It has been a long, hot summer. And I am not just referring to the sweltering, humid days and nights on the East Coast, the prolonged heat wave in Europe or the highest ever-recorded temperatures in Russia, resulting in out-of-control, devastating fires.

There have been flare-ups since early June with the Israeli raid on the Turkish-led flotilla heading to Gaza; things haven’t cooled down since. Just a short time ago it looked like the Israeli-Lebanon border was precariously close to yet another deadly war in the North.
Then there’s the BP oil disaster in the Gulf; the catastrophe in the south Punjab, with the Indus River floods washing away the homes and livelihoods of perhaps 20 million Pakistanis. Iran. Iraq. Afghanistan. No good news here to lower anxiety.
The Summer of Recovery doesn’t seem to have lived up to the expectations of economists or the rest of us either. Fewer Americans are taking vacations at the beach as workers are fearful still of layoffs, and unemployment is still high. Even back-to-school sales aren’t attracting customers and enticing them to spend. The mercury in the thermometer may have been spiking up but the Dow Jones chart hasn’t had much incline to allow us to enjoy the economic climate.
So, I hope you will understand my desire while on vacation to take refuge in an air-conditioned movie theater and just relax and forget the cares of the world for two hours. How could I miss with Julia Roberts in Liz Gilbert’s best-selling memoir “Eat Pray Love”? After all, here is a movie about a successful author who is increasingly dissatisfied with her life and her marriage and heads off on a year’s journey to find enlightenment, balance and love in three countries beginning with “I” – Italy, India and Indonesia. No Iceland, no Ireland, no Israel. As charming and as luminous as Ms. Roberts is, with her wide smile and her affability, she seems unable to do more than one thing at a time; one activity for each country: she eats voraciously in Italy, she meditates in India, and she falls in love in Bali.
I’m sorry, but there was all too little soul-searching and spiritual uplift for me. I do like a happy ending as much as the next girl and who can resist the charms of Javier Bardem? But I left the theater hungry for some pasta but otherwise unmoved. Where was the dramatization of what a real interior journey is? The hard work that is required in what Jews call a heshbon hanefesh, a spiritual accounting? How is Liz Gilbert transformed? How does she correct any errors, know herself better, call upon her spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and moral resources? Is an airline ticket and a change of scenery all it takes to find yourself?
Jews around the world are on a month’s journey as we prepare for Rosh Hashana. We think of the holiday as the New Year, but according to the Jewish tradition it is not the first month of the year. It is Passover that falls at the beginning of the calendar year and calls for us to do a physical cleaning – and get the chametz out of our house. From the first day of the month of Elul, the shofar is sounded as a reminder to begin our spiritual inventory, our spiritual cleansing. Passover is celebrated in the home, with our families. Rosh Hashana, and Yom Kippur are celebrated in synagogue, with our community. We complete our soulful reckoning with other people, not alone, not by ourselves, removed from society.
The blasts of the shofar are a wake-up call, as we move towards the communal celebration of the creation of the world and the journey we are not meant to take alone. The shofar reminds us that the creation of the world is not a one-time occurrence, but that we have the ability and the responsibility to lead ourselves and others to repair the world in partnership with the Divine creator. “Today the world is born”, says the liturgy. Every day the world is born anew.
On Yom Kippur, we intone the confessional as a community. Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu…striking our chests with each word of collective wrongdoing. We abuse, we betray, we are cruel. The alphabet of confession is built on the ABCs of sin, even if we ourselves did not commit an offense. We ask forgiveness as a community, melding all our sins together with all the strengths of others. In that forgiveness, in unity, we come to stand in relationship to others, to our family, our friends, our community, and Jews around the world, in the desire to do better in the coming year. Then we can joyously sing “ki anu amekha”, “For we are your people, and You are our God.”
May this New Year be one of hope, one of reconciliation, one in which you find personal and professional satisfaction, the love of family and friends, good health and much happiness, and peace, and may we continue to work together for the betterment of the Jewish people and the world.

Sydney Perry is executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven.

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