Shebrew asks its contributors: What are your Secular New Year’s Resolutions?
Audrey Kentor
If Obama can quit smoking, Audrey can make a new
year’s resolution to slow down and relax now and then.
If she “falls off the wagon,” she at least wants to
eat more kale and keep up with swing dancing lessons.
Lesly Hershman Gregory
I’m really not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions.It’s hard for me to come up with some big things that I should accomplish each year.I feel like all the major events in one’s life happen when you’re not looking too hard, so this is the one area where I don’t try to plan ahead.Rather than resolve to do something differently in the each year, I like to look back at the year that’s just ending and feel lucky and amazed at everything I’ve been through.This year I bought a house, got married, stayed relatively calm throughout both processes, and didn’t get too mad at anyone when I was stressed.These accomplishments were not things I resolved to do at the beginning of 2008, but I’m so very glad they happened and am so thankful that, as I reflect on 2008, I have so many things to smile about.
Elana Premack Sandler
My new year’s resolution is to volunteer
with 826 Boston, a non-profit tutoring and writing center that seeks
to strengthen each student’s power to express ideas effectively,
creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.
Andrew Bock
I think this is the year that I actually try and meet “a nice Jewish girl” as I have had a couple of failed relationships in ‘08 outside of the religion. I’m starting to wonder if faith plays a role in compatibility? Hopefully I’ll be lucky enough to find out.
Sara-Rivka Davidson
It’s been a big year for me of emotional and personal growth, and this year I am hoping to work on some external things. Keep going to the gym, focus on my writing, but more importantly, learn to sit still, and relax.
Gabrielle Kaufman
Capture the beauty in the mundane.
My greatest challenge, and greatest joy, come from the effort to take a mental snapshot of a moment in my life. There are many worth keeping in my memory photo album. These images are of holding a baby’s hand, tasting a lovingly prepared meal, sharing a blanket on the couch with a treasured friend. But sadly, I allow external pressures to strip me of these tasty memory morsels. It is my resolution this year, to freeze time, if only a nano-second, and burn it into my memory. Much like Frederick the mouse in the Leo Lionni book, these treasures will then be stored for sustenance in the cold, dark winter.
When my son was born, his sister was six and a half. I had given away all the baby furniture and items, certain that I was finished with baby times. This time around, I knew that all the junk stores sell you is more about image and profit margin than about what we truly need. A few cloth diapers, a car seat and an empty drawer to put the baby in (okay, a bassinet), and I was set. In talking about the “things” with my friend, she shared with me that her family had a changing table/dresser that had been passed down through five cousins. They were ready to share it with the next baby. It sounded good to me and the price tag fit too. Two weeks before my baby Zev came into the world, we loaded up a friend’s station wagon and hauled in the well-loved piece of furniture. Each child’s name was written in the back of the dresser along with the year of his/her birth. I guess this clunky, unattractive hunk of wood was an heirloom. At any rate, it was serviceable.
When I was in college, still unsure of my sexual orientation, and chronically single, I tried to explain to my friends why my parents frowned upon me dating non-Jews.My friends, who were just trying to help me get over my lack-of –dating woes would say, “Why? I don’t get it. You’re liming yourself and you options.”
At the age of twenty I didn’t fully understand the consequences of dating a non-Jew, but I did know that my parents were against it because “it would make things harder,” as they said. I would have to explain my upbringing, my traditions, holidays, and my faith. It meant pissing my parents off, (something I had done enough of with body piercings), disappointing them, perhaps even making them feel like I was shunning how they raised me.
This time of year is rife with symbols of celebration, strength, and miracles for the Jewish people.Representations of Channukah include everything from eight nights of light in the darkest time of year to little chocolates shaped like Maccabees.But where are the images of women in our annual retelling of the Channukah story?In the traditional religious-school versions, all the major players in the story are men.
And yet, we find an incredible symbol of women’s strength in an unlikely place: Channukah food.
Channukah is over, but family gatherings, sales at the mall, light, love, joy, and maybe even some struggles are still at the forefront of our minds.
This issue is features tradition and feminism, exchanging presents with your non-Jewish in-laws, interfaith dating, and of course, New Year’s resolutions.
