Rosh Hashanah

To all my loyal readers out there:

Shana Tova! Happy New Year! Glad Nyåren (that's Swedish)!

The Jewish year 5766 is upon us, and that means that it's once again time to dip the cucumbers, er, apples, in the honey! And sit in synagogue and pray for most of the day! I'm so excited, I've put exclamation points after all the sentences so far! Or not.

Well, one of the great things about new years (aside from the countdown in Hebrew, glasses overflowing with Manischewitz, and guys kissing other guys at midnight) is making new year's resolutions. These are not like UN resolutions, which get cool preambulatory phrases and working papers and committees. No, these are personal, which makes sense, because I'm about to share mine right here with you:

1. Stay in contact with more people. Send emails and call people, and hopefully people will call me more often too (you hear that everyone out there?)

2. Be more conscious of what I say. Humans are the only animal that have the gift of speech, apart from this cool parrot I saw at a fair that impersonated the... but I digress. Seriously, what we say can change the world, from my monumental "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington to my newspaper article "Lessons in Division." If you put enough monkeys in front of a computer, they could not write Shakespeare, though they could probably create a more interesting blog. I'm not quite sure if that is relevant, but I think you know what I mean. I'm going to start by removing some of the censored yet implied expletives from the "Big Lebowski" quotes. One small step for man...

3. Learn to read Megillat Esther for Purim. I received an actual scroll for my bar mitzvah, but so far it has been as useful to me as the baseball glove I brought to the kibbutz. I have lots of time to learn in the yeshiva, so this goal is feasible, I think.

Now make your own goals.

Today, I also went to a mikvah, for the first time in my life. It was actually very refreshing and spiritually uplifting. Part of that, of course, stems from having the right gear and dressing appropriately (see picture).

Enjoy the New Year.