Welcome to the year 5,781.
No, this isn’t a science fiction column about the future. It is one written in the present about the here and now. It is about celebrating the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana.
According to the Jewish calendar, the recorded history of Jews started 5,781 years ago. The words “in the beginning” started it all, and throughout our history the Jews have wandered the world, looking for a home. They have finally found their home in Israel.
Moses wandered for 40 years looking for a home. He did it because he had faith that what he was doing would lead to a better world.
Ever since that time the Jewish people have been at the mercy of others, never in charge of their own destiny. Yet they persevered, continuing to seek a better, safer, saner and more peaceful life wherever they could find it.
For over five millennia they have been on the lookout for that place to call home. Sometimes they sought refuge on their own volition. But most of the time they were on the run because they had been kicked out of the countries of their birth, chased out by the ignorance of small minds, forced out by zealots seeking a sense of religious superiority, and, most horrifically, condemned to death and total destruction during the Holocaust.
It hasn’t been easy, but the Jewish people have managed to survive. There is a Hebrew word, “bitachon,” that tries to describe the underlying cause of the optimism the Jews (God’s Chosen People) possess in a seemingly pessimistic world.
I am reminded of Tevya in “Fiddler on the Roof” when he is lamenting his latest calamity at the time of Russian pogroms and all the heartache of those times. He looks heavenward and implores God in some kind of plaintiff prayer, “I know we are the Chosen People but once in a while can’t You choose someone else?”
And yet Tevya and all of the others through time have persevered. Perhaps it is an optimism instilled in birth, or perhaps it is just an unwillingness to go quietly into the night. The fact remains that we are always seeking that place of peace.
On this particular Rosh Hashana, which was celebrated this weekend, there was good reason to be optimistic, again and always.
The very good news that President Donald Trump brought both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to the table to sign a normalization accord with the state of Israel portends a future that could turn that region away from the constant state of war that has defined the last century and has threatened to consume yet another.
Trump acted properly on the long-held desire of the UAE and its other state colleagues to change up the dynamics in the Middle East that have led to one war after another and thwarted what should be a region of peace, prosperity and leadership on the world stage.
I remember when the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993 by the Palestinians (PLO) and the state of Israel at the urging of the United States under President Bill Clinton. It, too, was a time of great optimism. And while that peace hasn’t happened yet, the knowledge that it could and would come about has driven Israel toward this latest effort to achieve a lasting peace in the region.
Then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres explained his vision to me for a future in which Israel and her Arab neighbors were at peace. He had no illusions at his advancing age that it would happen in his lifetime, but he believed it would.
And that the result would be the total transformation of a region of the world from a warring, difficult powder keg set to blow up at a moment’s notice, to that biblical vision of a Garden of Eden stretched from the Arabian Peninsula all the way across the North of Africa. Bitachon.
The stories this past week about the normalization of relations among UAE, Bahrain and Israel — with others certainly to follow — are the latest draft of Shimon Peres’ incredible vision happening in real time.
Rosh Hashana begins with a holy celebration of the Jewish year. The High Holy Days end when the shofar (ram’s horn) sounds at sundown on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, 10 days later.
Amid the pessimism that dominates our world of coronavirus, a failing economy for so many people and protests in our streets over social injustice, there is some reason for optimism. Bitachon is a reason to have faith in the plea, “next year in Jerusalem.”
To all people, everywhere, who are of goodwill, Happy New Year.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.