Asking the Clergy: What are your wishes for Rosh Hashanah 2021?

Beginning at sundown on Sept. 6, Jews across Long Island will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This week’s clergy discuss the high holiday that includes the blowing of the shofar, or ram’s horn, attending synagogue services, lighting candles and eating festive meals with such traditional dishes as apples dipped in honey.

Rabbi Shalom Ber Cohen

Village Chabad at Stony Brook

Before we discuss wishes for the New Year, let’s understand the origins of the day. Adam and Eve were created on Rosh Hashanah, the very first day of human history. The following year on that day, the birthday of Adam and Eve, God evaluated Adam and Eve’s achievements over the year. Rosh Hashanah thus became the day of judgment — and it is God’s judging that calls for introspection and growth.

My wish is that our collective introspection inspires us all to New Year resolutions that include the two ingredients needed for tikkun olam (mending the world); bringing more godliness and goodness into the world. What can we do to welcome more of God’s presence in our life? What can we do to add just a little more kindness in the world? We need it now more than ever. May we be blessed with a year of global health, happiness, tolerance, a year that we can agree to disagree and respect others, unity, inner peace, world peace and prosperity.

Rabbi Helayne Shalhevet

Temple Beth Emeth of Mount Sinai

My wish for the New Year is that we come to understand that we need to do more than just wish. There is plenty that I — or we — want to see. An end to hunger, terror and war; an end to the pandemic; a fulfilling year of health and success for our children and families. But as Jews we know well that wishing — we call it prayer — can only get you so far.

A passage in our prayer book (the passage actually dates to Christian writing), reads "pray is if everything depends on God. Act as if everything depends on you." It teaches us that we should pray, wish and pray some more. But if we do nothing to make it happen, we can’t just expect that it will. Judaism teaches that we are all partners with the Holy One and that if we enter that sacred partnership and combine prayer with action, all things are achievable.

My wish for the New Year is that we won’t sit back and wait for the world to fulfill our wishes for us, but that we’ll enter into the sacred partnership with the Holy One and with each other to turn our wishes and prayers into reality.

Rav-Hazzan (Rabbi-Cantor) Scott M. Sokol

Head of School, Schechter School of Long Island, Williston Park

Jews are fortunate in having both a secular and religious New Year season during which we can reflect on the past and aspire to better futures. If ever there were a time in our collective history to engage in aspirational thinking, it is now.

It will come as no surprise that my wishes for this New Year all revolve around health and healing. One of the primary liturgical poems of the high holiday season is "Avinu Malkeinu," which beseeches God in the role of parent and sovereign — caring deeply about his children and with the power and ability to bring about change: "Our Father, Our King bring complete healing to your people who are ill."

But the ravages of COVID-19 have not been merely physical. As a clergy-educator who also happens to be a psychologist, I have seen firsthand the mental health decline and the erosion of social-emotional norms that help our schools and our communities thrive. My sincere hope in the New Year is that we can rebuild and renew our connections to one another, and recapture ourselves in the process. Have a good, and sweet year!