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Calendars are maps of time, and like maps, they only really exist inside our heads. Yet they have always helped to define civili-sations and to shape the pattern of individu-al lives. The Jewish calendar has both religious and agricul-tural origins, and has remained triumphantly out of sync with the Western 'secular' cal-endar, which grew out of the Roman Chris-tian calendar that has largely taken over the world.
Here in Israel [Rabbi Tirzah Ben-David lives in Israel and ‘commutes’ to Copenhagen, Denmark about every other month. –Ed.] the tension between 'their time' and 'our time' is felt most acutely at the 'Secular New Year' as it's come to be known. Our Russian community calls it 'Sylvester', after the saint, and celebrates it bois-terously, as do many secular Israelis.
But among the religious, and even the not-so-religious, there is discomfort and often hostility. For these Jews, celebrating New Year 2012 is navigating by someone else's map. We have Rosh Hashana, an ancient festival of spiritual and moral renewal - what do we need this bit of pagan frivolity for? And of course they're right, but also wrong.
Our ultimate challenge as Jews has always been to find our place in the world, in order to understand our purpose, our task, as God's Chosen People. All our achievements so far have resulted from our reaching out to non-Jews, whether they want us or not; that's supposed to be why we're here.
Nothing passes through a closed door, neither pagan frivolity nor great Jewish wisdom. The cost of isolation has always been too high; in the end it has brought us only powerlessness and death. We are part of the web of all humankind, or we are irrelevant. That, for Jews, is the real challenge of 2012. Happy New Year
Rabbi Tirzah Ben-David
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