Shalom
By Shana Ogren
Shana Tova!
It is Yom Kippur now; the Jewish New Year. "Shana Tova" is what we say in Hebrew to celebrate and to send greeting this week. "A good year" is our Jewish wish.
A good year for us starts in forgiveness. For one week before Yom Kippur, we think about forgiving—about who to forgive and who to ask for forgiveness.
On New Year's Day, my mother and my brother and I would always practice our cultural Judaism by going on a walk around, or sitting together outside. Taking turns speaking, we would name those we had forgiven. If we could not forgive someone, we would ask God for the power to forgive them. We would then ask for forgiveness from those we had wronged or hurt.
It's a good start to a good year. We walk out of what we were painfully holding onto and into the birth, opening, and beginning of something new. The death of one year leads to the birth of another.
Shalom!
Shalom is what we say in Hebrew, both to bid goodbye and to bid hello. You're leaving? "Shalom." You just arrived? "Shalom." This Jewish greeting or farewell also means "Peace."
Every time we greet you, we send you peace. Every time we leave you, we send you peace. And we know, because of the meaning of the word, that each time we say hello, we also say goodbye. And each time we say goodbye, we are also saying hello.
It is difficult this year to say goodbye. The death of someone I love stuck the Beatles song in my head every day – "You say goodbye and I say hello. Hello, hello . . . I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello . . . . "
Although this is a hard year to say goodbye, I look forward to saying hello to the birth of a new year. I really say Shalom this year. I get peace from the knowledge that a farewell and a greeting sit side by side.
When we break our daily New Year's fast at sundown on Yom Kippur, we start by eating something sweet, in the hope and representation of a sweet year to come.
A good year. A sweet year.
Shalom to the past.
Shalom to the future.
Ball Python image on banner by Richard Chambers
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