Thoughts on the new year

It’s almost the new year. It’s the time symbolized by Janus, the Roman god who gave his name to the year’s first month.

Janus is the god of doorways and transitions and liminality. He’s the two-headed god, able to look both forward and backward. Perhaps that’s a gift, perhaps it’s a trap. Like Janus, it could go either way.

At the turn of every year we are faced with Janus’s dilemma. Look forward or look behind? Leap into the new or remember the old? Also, focus on the good or the bad? Or both. We always could keep in mind the Scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz” as he crosses his arms to point awkwardly in both directions. “People do go both ways,” he says.

So which way do we look?

Judged in just about any way, this has been a horrendous year. Antisemitism is rising all over the world, and from both directions. It’s the dreaded horseshoe, where the far left and the far right come close enough to touch at the edge, all stupid senseless lies and insecurities and historic hobgoblins roiling and rolling in the mud together. It’s tempting to believe the worst only of the side that you don’t like, but that’s a mistake. It’s necessary to be clear-eyed. The danger is coming from all over.

Israel has become more and more of a wedge issue, and Zionism has become a dirty word in much of the country. That is frightening and dangerous, but it is something else about which we must be clear. Pretending that things we don’t like aren’t there doesn’t make them go away.

Domestically, our beloved country has become more and more divided. Our politics have become cruder, coarser, crueler. Our institutions are being harmed as our trust in them is dwindling. We hope that this is not irreversible, but the longer it goes unchecked the harder it will be to fix.

So where’s the good?

Well, the days are getting longer again. There’s a little more sunlight every day.

Jews around the world are undeterred by the hatred. There’s more Jewish pride. More Jewish joy. More Jewish community.

There also is great support for Jews. It’s not all hatred. There’s love and solidarity as well. There are menorahs in the windows of non-Jewish houses. There’s an outpouring of sympathy. There are people like Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Syrian-Australian fruit vendor who threw himself on one of the murderers at Bondi Beach. There are people like the police officers who guard our shuls — it’s terrible that we need them, but they do it with kindness and sensitivity. There are non-Jews who ally with us, just as we have allied with them.

I am moved and uplifted by Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, the subject of our cover story, who met the horrors of October 7 and the war that followed by choosing to publicly honor the women whose valor inspired the nation, and I am moved and uplifted by those women. I am captured by the beauty of the photographs of her friend Laura Ben David z’l, whose eye for grace and beauty calms the soul.

There still is good in the world. Let’s work toward increasing it in this coming year.

—JP

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