Dear John, as we begin the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah tomorrow at sundown, we want to share insights from ADL Rabbinic Fellow David Wolpe with you. We hope that everyone in the ADL community can find something important to consider in his essay about how we can all aspire to push for a world without hate in the days to come.

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Although Rosh Hashanah often sparks thoughts about the state of the world, it also asks us to look inside ourselves. I find the teaching that follows helpful both to understand how I should look at events and how I should hold myself in a frightening and unsettling time.

Rabbi Eliyahu Dressler was a spiritual guide in Israel in the 1900s. He taught something very wise about our internal battles that is important for everyone to remember in this year of so much tumult and discord and pain. I want to share his insights with you and the entire ADL community as we approach the Jewish High Holidays.

Napoleon once declared that every battle is decided in the first fifteen minutes. Rabbi Dressler points to a sort of parallel in internal battles, but it doesn’t even take fifteen minutes. Indeed, he says, certain battles are decided before the battle is even joined.

Let me explain:

Dressler taught that all of us have a nukudat bechira — a tipping point in making decisions. For every person that point is different. If you put two salads in front of me, I have to choose which one to eat. But if you place a salad and a ham sandwich in front of me, I don’t have to choose. Because I keep kosher and therefore don’t eat pork products (and moreover am a vegetarian!), there is no decision point needed. A prior choice has already been made. The battle was long since won. I stand, in terms of the food decision, in conquered territory.

On this Rosh Hashanah, we understand that much of what has happened this year has forced people to make choices: how they will react, how vocal they will be, how to relate to others who do not share the same views. On October 7, in the face of the horror that is ongoing, many people had to make a choice and to hold fast to what was right (and sadly, for some, to what was not right) throughout the year. But for many of us, the real choice came long ago. We knew we would speak up against prejudice and hatred and antisemitism.

Now we face a new year. New years are not only about resolutions to change, they are about renewing the convictions we already carry, the choices we have already made. God, our teachings tell us, renews creation daily. We too renew ourselves daily. After the anguish of the year that has passed, this Rosh Hashanah will bring us more strength, greater resolve and a deeper sense of the community of those who share our passions. It is a time to strengthen the choices we have already made to speak up against the proliferating hatreds and prejudices that threaten us, Israel and the larger human community.

The Jewish people, along with those who support the Jewish people, are going through a time of trial. Rosh Hashanah is here to remind us of what we already believe, the choices we have made long ago inside ourselves: to fight for what is good, to believe in the possibility of change, to broaden our embrace and deepen our souls. May this year find us true to the missions we have already accepted, and be prepared for new undertakings to better ourselves, preserve our people and heal the world.

As we forge ahead, ADL is so grateful to have your support in this struggle for a better world, Fighting Hate for Good.

We send you and yours wishes of health and happiness in the year to come.

Sincerely,

Rabbi David Wolpe

Rabbinic Fellow

ADL