Shana tova, happy New year! Can you believe it’s 2025!

If wishing a happy new year feels a bit redundant it might be because we just experienced the beginning of a new year as recently as October.

As Jews, we are lucky. We get to celebrate New Year’s twice in a matter of months. Rosh Hashanah happened and we went through our annual process of reflecting and atoning. We had the opportunity to hope and wish that this year would be different. It was really only a couple of months ago that we made our New Year’s resolutions, that we decided that this would be the year when we would take up a new hobby or learn a new skill. Now that a couple of months has passed, we can sit back and look at how are resolutions are going. Are we exercising as much as we said we would? How are we doing on defeating that bad habit?

Two months after the new year is a good time to check in. It lets us think about what those resolutions were all about in the first place. We can take this opportunity to grade ourselves. We can see if we have stuck to our resolutions or we can look at the resolutions themselves. What do the commitments that we made just a few months ago tell us about what we thought we needed? Are those still the same things that we need today?

Let’s go back further than three or four months. Think about your life two years ago. Did you know that you would be exactly where you are today? What about 5 years ago or 10? Does your life today look precisely as you thought it would look when you imagined it 10 years ago?

One of the great things about looking back at who we were in the past is to think about the things that you thought were important earlier in your life. It gives us the opportunity to realize that the things that we thought we desperately needed were things that we don’t even want today.

In celebration of this new year let’s look back and let’s look forward. Here is an exercise to do. Find a picture of yourself with some of your loved ones from the year 2007 (or 1997, 1977 or whatever time you like). Once you stop laughing at everyone’s appearance, once you’re done reminiscing (perhaps with some sadness) on how young everyone looks, grab a paper and pencil and answer the following questions.

• Are those people still the people that I love today? If I have lost some of them, what have I done to continue their legacy?

• What was my biggest worry from that time? Is it still a concern? What can I do to help alleviate it?

• Did I accomplish the things that I thought I wanted to? Is it ok that I didn’t?

• Think about the goals you have in your life today. Are they the same or different than they were when those pictures were taken?

• Is there still an issue or a character flaw in your life that was apparent then that you have yet to fix?

Write down some goals you hope to accomplish the next time you open that envelope. Use the past as a way to guide your future. Look to the pictures for inspiration in coming up with some goals and resolutions.

Now take your answers and put them in an envelope. Before you address the envelope to be opened later, take a picture of your life and your loved ones today. You can date it a year from now or even longer. You can encourage your family members and friends to engage in this exercise with you.

As we enter this new year, we wonder again in what books we will be inscribed. We wonder what the year holds in store for us and whether our lives will be better, worse, or the same 12 months from now. It is my prayer for us all that we enter this year with excitement and trepidation. I pray that we are able to see our lives enriched by our efforts; that we are able to feel more loved and secure, more passionate and happy than we are today. In that vein, I would like to offer the blessing that we say as we bless the new month every month.

May it be Your will Adonai our God and God of our ancestors, to renew this year for us in joy and blessing. Grant us a long life, a peaceful life of goodness, a life of sustenance, a life of health a life of awe of heaven and resistance of temptation. A life of richness and honor, a life in which we possess a love of torah and a awe of heaven. A life in which our hearts our filled with worthy goals.

And let us say…Amen.