When is the “New Year” celebrated in Israel? According to several polls asking Israelis which “New Year” they celebrated – “Rosh Hashanah” or “December 31” – the overwhelming answer was “Rosh Hashanah.” Whether in the synagogue, at home, or a picnic at the beach, Rosh Hashanah is for most Israelis the “Israeli New Year.”
Having been a student, congregational rabbi and teacher my entire life, I always connected to Rosh Hashanah as the beginning of “my year.” In school or in synagogue life, the year begins in the fall, lasts through June, then there’s summer. I never connected to beginning a year “in the middle of a year” that already begun!
Now that I live in Israel, where the transition from December 31 to January 1 happens without a ball dropping in Dizengoff Center, do I even care about this New Year?
The answer is yes, because the one nice thing about January 1st is the idea of a “New Year’s Resolution.” For whatever reason, I’ve never associated Rosh Hashanah with New Year’s Resolutions, so I’ve always looked at January 1st as the opportunity to “start fresh” or “restart.”
Does living in Israel impact how I now view “New Year’s Resolutions”? Definitely. I love Israel – its people, its cafes, its street culture, its literature, its music. I love the spirit here. In Randy Newman’s lyrics about my former abode, “aint nothing like it nowhere.”
But I despise Israel’s divisive politics – those in the knesset, in the religious world, and especially the continued “ethnic identity politics” that politicians and rabbis use and abuse. I hate all of that as much as I love everything else here.
So as an Israeli who is also a rabbi and works in the public sphere of Jewish life in this country, my New Year’s Resolution for 2025 comes courtesy of my rabbinic role model and inspiration, Israel’s first Sephardic Chief Rabbi – Rav Benzion Meir Hai Uziel.
In 1953, Rav Uziel composed a spiritual will whose words ring more powerfully today than when he wrote them. This section of his document is my 2025 New Year’s Resolution, my first-ever as a permanent resident of Israel:
“Preserve with absolute care the peace of our nation and of our state – ‘And you shall love truth and peace’ (Zechariah 8:19) — because disputes and divisiveness are our most dangerous enemies. By contrast, peace and unity are the eternal foundations for the national sustenance of the House of Israel. Therefore, remove all causes of divisiveness and disputes from our camp and our state, and place in their stead all factors that will lead to peace and unity amongst us.”
Whether or not Israelis celebrate the secular New Year, this is a resolution that this entire country must adopt.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the international director of the Sephardic Educational Center.
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