“Every seven years we have the precious opportunity to tap into an internal and eternal reservoir of agency. It’s on us as individuals and as a community to tune into these cyclical opportunities and use them wisely if we wish to survive and thrive. The Year of Shmita, re-imagined, is our invitation to release and to renew our very essence. To begin again.” – Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
One day in the future we may look back and wonder: What did we learn from this pandemic? Did we use this wake up call as an opportunity to grow? Did we commit to healthier and kinder ways of being human? Did we commit to taking better care of ourselves and of each other? Did we do what we can to leave a world worth living in for future generations?
I’d like to believe that when those questions are asked our replies will be a mix of honest confirmation and hesitant shrugs. I want to plant the seeds of hopeful change right now – today – as this new year begins, with all the turmoil and uncertainty, and with the gifts of hopeful fresh beginnings.
This coming year is the year of Shmita, the seventh in the cycle of the Jewish calendar, reminding us, just like each weekly Sabbath, to honor more than our need and greed. This is the year that calls on us to pause, so we can breath, and be, and do – better.
The Shmita year, originally designed as an agricultural and socio-economic sabbatical for the land of Israel and its people, offers modern society a radical model for rest – a way to overcome gaps in prosperity, to carve out the time and space to truly feel the responsibility we have to one another, and to inspire lifelong commitment to care for our shared earth.
We are called to rise in our roles as co-creators of a healthy, healing ecosystem of sacred, sustainable, and systemic love and justice. It’s a year for us to grieve, to grow, to rest and release some of what we are holding on to so that we can start again, better.
This 5782 Shmita year, we reflect on truly astonishing circumstances. We face the pandemic, and consider our response.
Can we rise to the challenge?
I am excited to begin this year together, to explore, all year long, what healing looks like, what happens when we plant seeds of change – and let them grow.
Shana Tova: Let this be a year of healing and hope, release and repair.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
