For many days before this eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Elul thoughts of Rabbi Alan Litwak were expressed in “eluls” daily during the month of Elul that presages the end of 5768 and inaugurates the year of 5769.  At this time the thoughts of the Rabbi (many of which I am sure were borrowed from sages of another time) were directing our thoughts to the many things we might have or could have done if we were so inclined.  Unfortunately when a year slips by we note that we didn’t accomplish much of importance and perhaps did many things for which we should be sorry.

Wishing all my friends a Happy New Year is a redundancy for each person I greet is with the wish that he or she has a Good Yom Tov – or, have a great holiday.  I think that every day is a Yom Tov with me and I am buoyed up by having reached another milestone or another day in which I can share my thoughts with so many people whose lives I have touched along the way.  The month including Tishre and Cheshvan is replete with the separate holy days which all together make up the High Holy Days.

Tonight, Carol and I will dress up with white tops and black bottoms as our choir outfits and sing along with a professional group and perform the rituals of ushering in the New Year. I have high hopes that 5 thousand 7 hundred and 69 will be a better year for all of us and wish, once again, that you have a good year.

This will be a good year to stop two wars and all the saber rattling that passes for diplomacy and solving problems between neighbors.  This New Year will be a good year to begin the healing of our world.  We could stop the pollution of the skies and the air we breath by turning off the US and foreign spigots that fill our cars, planes and ships.

This is a good year to have the political promises be fulfilled.  It is a time for the poor, the old, the ill and the immigrant who cry out for alms to be given work and hope for working out their own problems.  The foolish buying into the DreamWorks presented by Banks and Financial Institutions has made so many of our Working Class and Middle Class into beggars.  Our beggars should shame us because we have allowed them to fall between the cracks.

It is warming to think that for nearly six thousand years recorded in the oral records and writings of the ancient Hebrews are the directions for a sensible and responsible society.  May we live to see the beginning of the end of our troubles and the end of the beginning of the good things we are capable of doing to heal the world.   L’ Shanah Tovah!