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GUEST BLOG: Happy New Year from Rabbi Mark Dratch

Sep 17, 2014 — Categories: , ,

A Reflection for Rosh Hashanah: There is an old Jewish blessing offered as the New Year arrives: “May the old year and its troubles end, and the new year and its blessings begin.” A beautiful and hopeful thought, until you think: each new year begins with aspirations of change, redemption, blessing, and healing, and yet each ends with disappointment, struggle, and challenge. Perhaps this is the human condition.

There is an old Jewish blessing offered as the New Year arrives: “May the old year and its troubles end, and the new year and its blessings begin.”  A beautiful and hopeful thought, until you think:  each new year begins with aspirations of change, redemption, blessing, and healing, and yet each ends with disappointment, struggle, and challenge.  Perhaps this is the human condition.

We live in a yet unredeemed world with finite capacities, limited strengths, and overwhelming challenges.  Although we as individuals and collectives have achieved, created, and accomplished much, we have often fallen short of our aspirations and there is so much more we need to do.  For those of us who are people of faith, God is in Heaven, but all is not right with the world.  But we who are people of faith refuse to surrender. Despite the continuing challenges and shifting sands that form the foundations of our lives, our world, and our work, many of us are constitutionally unable and spiritually unwilling to surrender.  And so the majestic Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) comes to remind us of who we are (people created in God’s image) and for Whom and what we are living.

For those who feel trapped in the seemingly never ending cycles of abusive relationships, as well as those who have been battling intimate partner violence and feel they are fighting the same fight over and over again,  Rosh Hashanah is the gift of new potentials.  And it is not easy.

During times of personal crisis many of us find comfort and strength in our faith.  Many, however, feel very much alone, very much abandoned by the world, and very much deserted by God. Specifically at those times when our lives are the toughest we find that faith is the hardest. We reach out our hands to God for support, and our hands remain open, extended and empty. At times we do not even have the strength, or the will, to extend our hands and they remain stiff at our sides. How tragically ironic it is that especially at those times in our lives when we are bone tired, emotionally weary, and psychologically dreary, we feel so spiritually spent.

What distinguishes people of faith, even during these “dark nights of the soul”, is the fact that despite God's absence, we persevere, we refuse to yield. Despite it all, we refuse to accept a Godless reality.  Even when the Divine Presence seems absent we invoke the Name of God and offer blessing and prayer. It is not only what we do and say that enables us to be counted among the faithful, it is especially when we say it and do it: during moments of despair and trouble. It is at those moments when it is hardest to pray, that true prayer is needed the most and the best prayers are formed; it is at those moments when it is hardest to believe, that true belief is needed and true convictions are formed.

Our prayers and beliefs can sustain us—victims, survivors, and advocates alike—through long and difficult times. We are people of faith not because we always have absolute faith, but because we have faith in faith, in its possibilities, its strengths, and its rewards.

I urge you, as I urge myself, never despair and never, never give up! While, at times, God may be difficult to find, in the end God will be found. The pursuit of the divine itself is ennobling and uplifting and edifying. Spirituality is a muscle that must first be exercised and strengthened, and that can then, and only then, be redeeming. We need to work our way to the divine, despite the dreariness, despite the hardships and loss, and despite the depression. And we may find one day that despite it all, faith will absorb us and will be a source of strength, of support and of spirituality.

“May the old year and its troubles end, and the new year and its blessings begin.”

 

Rabbi Mark Dratch is Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Council of America and founder of JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse Free Environment. He serves as a trainer for FaithTrust Institute.

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