“I have a dream…” ― a phrase immortalised by Martin Luther King. “…I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character….” It was a dream that he did not live to see realized; a dream that is still not realized. But a man who dreams is a man who cares. And a man who cares is a man who makes a difference.
A husband and wife fight and they grow apart. Neither is willing to take the first step towards reconciliation and so the rift deepens. Each one blames the other for the problems in the relationship.
But, as time goes on, one of them realizes that there is a choice to be made: accept my own weaknesses; take responsibility for my own role in this discord — or allow my arrogance to contribute to the slow breakdown of the relationship.
This is the time of year that we are searching for chometz . Chometz represents slavery, not just physical, but spiritual – the inability to make the decisions that we want to make because we are held back by what we feel like doing. A smoker is not free. A drug addict is not free. A compulsive eater is not free. Now freedom doesn’t necessarily mean never again eating chocolate cake. It means being able not to do so when you are on a diet.
My first meaningful Jewish experience at seventeen was a Passover Seder. At the time, I was living with an addict. He would freebase heroin, ‘chasing the dragon’, as it was known, pretty much every day, and I regularly would come home from High School and find him sitting on our couch with eyes wide open, only the whites visible. Sadly, though almost inevitably, he eventually died of an overdose.
Rosh Hashana does not mean ‘new’ year, it means ‘head’ of the year. The head is the part of the body that guides and directs the whole.
In 167 BCE, the Greeks set out to destroy Judaism by imposing a ban on Jewish tradition, punishable by death. Many Jews had assimilated already. Once the decree was made, many more followed. A small band of die-hard Jews, known as the Maccabees, revolted and, three years later, succeeded in evicting the oppressors.
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