A better future

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross

My beloved, Carol, is a fervent admirer of the wonderful historical novels of Diana Gabaldon. So it is that, last year, in eager anticipation of the imminent release of Diana’s newest novel, “Go Tell the Bees That I have Gone,” Carol undertook the summer project of sewing a bee-themed quilt. She incorporated fabrics on all kinds of apiary themes, including not just bees and honeycomb and floral designs, but also panels punningly inviting us to “Bee Humble” and “Bee Kind.”

To a very great degree, that captures the theme of the ongoing Jewish New Year season, which begins a full month before Rosh haShanah, with the New Moon of Elul on Aug. 28, and runs onward for several weeks after New Year’s Day, until Simchat Torah on Oct. 18.

We are in for a wide array of experiences over the course of those inaugural weeks of 5783: sharing our S’lichot penitential prayer; hearing the shofar and the evocative melody of Kol Nidrei; casting our Tashlich crumbs into the water’s depths; looking at the stars through the foliage-decked roof of the sukkah; dancing jubilantly with the Torah scrolls; and reading lots and lots and lots of prayers. Yet, we start it all off when we inaugurate Rosh haShanah by dipping our round challah (and a piece of apple as “first-fruits”) into honey as an augury that the unknown future might “Bee” sweet.

Which is a compelling aspiration. After all, Welsh pop star Tom Jones famously noted, in a voice-poem lead-in to one of his ballads, that “tomorrow is promised to no one.” We Jews will see him and raise him, having learned from a fabulously ancient history fraught with both triumph and tragedy, that tomorrow, when it does come, has the potential of bringing a challenging experience of trauma and pain.

Yet, at the same time, we follow the dictum of the Hasidic master, Nachman of Breslov, “Never despair, even when difficult times come.” After all, we are the people assured by God — even in the midst of the Babylonian siege that destroyed Jerusalem — that “there is hope for your future” (Jeremiah 31:16).

In the wake of that trauma, the prophet Zechariah, nonetheless, described the Jewish people as asirei hatikvah, “the prisoners of hope.” Echoing that long-ago declaration, in modern times, haTikvah, “The Hope,” is the national anthem of our reborn homeland.

Daring to hope, and daring to give substance to those aspirations, is the hallmark of our people. Firm in our faith in our covenantal mission to God; firm in our belief in the importance and value of human life; and firm in our commitment to the indomitable human spirit, we Jews dare to welcome the future with eagerness. We anticipate, and actively aspire to, a future we firmly believe will be better because we exert ourselves to make it so.

In these challenging and difficult times, may the augury of a better future be the blueprint for our own worthy aspirations and affirmative actions. And may the sweetness of our Rosh haShanah honey be our summons — throughout the New Year, and all the years to come — to “Bee Humble,” “Bee Joyous” and “Bee Kind.”

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross serves at Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.