I write these lines as we bid goodbye to a complicated year – a year of crises, a year of disquiet, a year of painful moments and joyous events.
Both as individuals and as a nation, we stand before the question of how to “piece together the fragments into a long, firm blast of the shofar,” in the poetic words of the late Naama Henkin. How to enter the next year as a society, as a people, hand in hand, stronger and mightier than any crisis that might befall us; stronger than the forces that seek to divide us; stronger than those who wish us harm. How to step into the new year hoping to be the best version of ourselves.
Shmita, the sabbatical year, which begins this Rosh Hashanah, invites us to pause, to take a deep breath, to rest, to reflect and to reconsider where we are going. To reconsider the course of our relationships with each other. To reconsider the future of our relationship with the environment, so that we may engage with it on the basis of sustainability, not exploitation and destruction. To reconsider the relationship between our nation and the world around us; between us as individuals and our nation, our country, our homeland and our soil.
I believe that at this auspicious time, on the cusp of the Jewish New Year, in order to guarantee ourselves a sweet and good new year ahead, we must renew our promise – our promise to stand together, our promise to care.
We must care about our partnership. We must care about life, about health. We must care about the environment. We must care about other people’s pain, even if they are not “like us.” We must care about neighbors across the corridor, other neighborhoods across the road, other towns across the valley.
We must care about all the people who make up the mosaic of identities, beliefs, and values that comprise Israeli society. As I said in my inaugural address: starting with empathy, from a place of togetherness, we shall be able to continue building our common home – the Jewish and democratic state – and to fix it together. But we can do this only together.
In this new Jewish year, may our land know peace, and may we find the strength to let our internal quarrels, rivalries, and rage rest, like our fields. May we be able to look up and see that we are not so far apart after all; that all that stands between us is space for an extended hand.
May the year 5782 come in peace, and may it usher in good news and hope and, most importantly, good health for all.
Chag Sameach and Shana Tova, Israel!
The writer is the president of the State of Israel.