04 Jan 2012 at 10:54am

Dear Friends:

First of all, we want to thank you, our community, for riding the waves of this rocky year with us. It is your generosity of spirit, and of air miles, and of volunteering to make Chanukah happen well here no matter what, and leading services to inspire and console, and all the myriad of things you do, sung and unsung, that make this congregation such a haimish place, a homey place, where everyone is family. It's true, at our shul we're living our dream, we're embodying our motto.

So it's with joy that we tell you what a great Chanukah all the siblings of the Wechsler-Azen clan had together. Oy, the nachas. Thank the good Lord that Aryeh had the best rebound from a week of treatment yet, and ascribed it to the miracle of eating latkes. So, on we go into the new year, with hopes and trepidation, as the journey is far from over.

Rabbi Roland Matalon of B'nai Jeshurun in New York City spoke last Friday night about the distinction between Rosh Hashanah and the secular New Year.

Rosh HaShanah is about teshuva, returning to our source and renewing our days, and the secular New Year is about reminiscing the year that past and considering resolutions and hopes for the future. We'd add that it is also about the sigh of relief that we survived another year and have a chance at another trip around the sun.

Come to think of it, Rosh HaShanah is also called the Day of Memory, so the solar New Year's thinking back and looking ahead is a mirror of Rosh Hashanah, considering what's happened in order to move ahead. Instead of simply partying and calling it a year, we should embrace the energy of a new start and a new season, participating in bringing out as much as possible the aspect of our culture that strives to do better.

So we come to Jacob on his deathbed in this week's parasha. Jacob tells it like it is to his kids. It's not really a blessing, it's a description of each of his boys as he sees them, some good, some bad, some really put in their place. Snap, Crackle, Pop – Jake's Disses. No sugarcoating, no worrying about self-esteem.

So as we ride the fleeting and ebbing energy of a new year dissipating into the same old same old, let us look at our own lives and tell it like it is to our inmost self. Find time to hear the still small voice within you that our tradition says is the closest to the actual presence of the divine as we can get.

See what part of the same old still works, what works but could be better, and what needs a clean break altogether. What tweak in our psyches and souls might make a world of difference?

And remember, we're all part of Morasha Kehillat Ya-akov, those who have inherited the struggles of Jacob to reconcile the best and worst within us and hopefully, with the help of HaShem, tip the balance toward our best.