To all our dear readers here at Israel Today, we are ever so grateful to you. Your love, care, and support for the People of Israel is a source of inspiration and comfort to us all. Your passion to fight for Israel in the face of overwhelming odds, perseverance in faith for our future, and commitment to practical support reflect the best of our mutual Messianic Hopes.
Together may we embrace yet another New Year (5782) in the Jewish story with gratefulness for all that has been and all that shall be. For we are the head, not the tail, so we can look back, eye-to-eye, without disillusions or illusions, and with lessons learned look forward to live free to love and care with gratitude. Not chained to the past with guilt or regret, but seeking daily to show appreciation to our loved ones, family and friends, and with steady gaze behold the beauty around us while everyday enjoying the splendor of our Creator’s reflection.
I leave you with these words of Leah Goldberg (1911-1970), our Hebrew poetess and one of Israel’s national treasures, which express so well my prayer for you in this New Year.
Teach me, oh God, to bless and to pray
about the mystery of a withered leave,
about the luminosity of a ripe fruit
about this freedom – to see, to sense, to breathe,
to know, to yearn, to fail.
Teach my lips blessing and song of praise
whenever your time renews itself, morning and night,
so that my day today
will not be like yesterday and the day before yesterday
so that my day will not be routine on me.
Teach me to smile, to laugh the laughter of Rachel
from within the love of who is a ray of God
See now – I am ready to weave as to unstitch
the tapestry of the first creation of light and shade.
Shalom and Shana Tova from all of us here at Israel Today.
The Jewish New Year begins tonight, Monday, at sunset and ends Wednesday evening. We will continue our exclusive reporting from on the ground here in Israel on Thursday.
Israel Today is a Jerusalem-based Zionist news agency founded in 1978 to bring a biblical dimension to journalism on Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world.