Dear friends,

Blessings for the new year, flowering from the seed of a joyful memory: On a New Year’s Eve in the mid-1980s, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, as the clock ticked midnight, blew on the shofar the melody of Auld Lang Syne: “We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

May we all be blessed to drink that cup of kindness, not only for old times long since, but also for our futures yet to come; and just as Reb Zalman wove together in humor and depth the strands of two different traditions, may we all be blessed to weave together at the edges of our varied communities and traditions and of our interior identities the threads of connection, the fringes of sharing, so that without dissolving our differences we can bring our varied selves, the inner and the outer, into an affirmation of the One.

Shalom, salaam, pax, paz, peace!  – Rabbi Arthur Waskow