Happy New Year 5770

Happy Rosh Hashanah to all our Jewish friends. Tonight marks the beginning of the Jewish new year. Beyond dipping apples in honey, we don't celebrate Rosh Hashanah because, well, we're not Jewish. We're still living back in the year 2009. The Jews are 3,ooo years ahead of us! It's nice, though, to have so many options for setting goals, just in case you want to make some resolutions. If you miss this one, you can catch the Western new year January first or the Chinese new year shortly after. I like that Rosh Hashanah occurs around the beginning of the school year because it always seems like a time of renewal to me.

My one and only true Rosh Hashanah dinner was when I was 17. I was a freshman in college at Indiana. Many, many of the students in the music school were Jewish. A roommate of mine, LeAnne, noticed I was going to be alone in the dorms over Rosh Hashanah and invited me home with her to Skokie, Illinois. Her family wasn't particularly observant; no yarmulkes, no readings of the Torah. Rosh Hashanah dinner was just a chance for family to come together and celebrate, to maybe reflect on their rich heritage, and to meet LeAnne's Mormon roommate from Utah! I am still grateful for that invitation. In LeAnne's home, I felt wrapped in comfort, accepted by a family that was remarkably similar to my own, yet worlds apart. As I stood on the brink of adulthood that fall, that Rosh Hashanah dinner nourished my view of the world out there, letting me know that outside my cocoon, all kids of wonderful people were celebrating, worshipping, befriending, striving and living good lives. That Rosh Hashana was an awakening for me, a gentile, that I have carried with me ever since. Thanks, LeAnne.