Old Wishes for a New Year

The most important wish and prayer of all, of course, is that we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a shnas chaim v’shalom, a year of life, lasting peace, and good health, with a clear victory in the war, the return of our hostages, and at least a pause in the raging anti-Semitism around the world. These override everything else.

Still, there are a few other wishes, perhaps of less portent, that would enhance life in the coming year. For example:

A wish for less rushing in our daily lives. We are obsessed with speed; it is the symbol of our times: faster cars, faster computers, faster trains. We spend fortunes to make our computers respond in ten seconds instead of 20 seconds. More troubling is the fact that the obsession even threatens to invade our religious lives, with some daily minyanim that are speedy and non-stop “express” rather than much slower “locals.” The old maxim, “speed kills,” is true not only on the roads, but also in our connections with the Al-mighty. May we have more locals and less expresses. (Please watch for a fuller treatment of this in a forthcoming column, im yirtzeh Hashem.)

An amusing wish: that native Israelis would look less surprised when I say shalom to them even when I don’t know them. Have they never heard of the rabbinic dictum in Avos IV:20 about being makdim shalom to everyone, to be the first and not the last to wish others well?