To all my followers and fans who celebrate, wishing you all the very best for a happy, healthy and sweet New Year.  Shana Tova!

I found some inspiring messages on Haaretz.com that I would like to share…..and even if you don’t celebrate, these are worthwhile reading.

Four rabbis share lessons for the Jewish New Year in 2012

Rabbi Stewart Weiss (Orthodox), is the director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana.

Rabbi Weiss’ message is – Listen to Each Other.  “I think that the primary message that I want to communicate this Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur is for all of us to work on our interpersonal relationships, and specifically on the art of hearing,” says Weiss……But it’s listening that we have to work on, and perfect that art. God gave us two ears, one mouth. We should be doing twice as much listening.”

Rabbi Miri Gold ‏(Reform‏), leads Kehilat Birkat Shalom in Kibbutz Gezer, a regional synagogue affiliated with the Israeli Reform movement.

Rabbi Gold’s message is – Hope and Action. “I believe that Judaism is all about doing. And after we’ve gone through our soul-searching in the month of Elul, I think there’s a tendency to come up feeling discouraged and despairing over all of the things that went wrong in our own lives and in our society and in our world. And so the message I’m trying to convey is that during this holiday season, when we often talk about it as the birth of the world and humankind, that we can realize that it’s really a time when we can make changes and show by our actions that even on a very small and modest level we can make the world a better place…”

Rabbi Jeff Cymet ‏(Masorti‏) leads Kehila Chadasha, a new congregation in North Tel Aviv. A practicing family lawyer, Cymet was ordained four years ago.

 Rabbi Cymet’s message is – Search for Meaning.  “Everyone … needs to recommit and renew and refresh their own personal mission. And we do that with the understanding that each one of us is mortal. None of us will live forever, and we know each and every year there are some who will live and some who will die. And we need to figure out how to make our own lives meaningful in that context − meaningful in the context of knowing that each one of us will have an end at some point and how to make our works for the coming year have some lasting value.”

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin ‏(Orthodox‏) is the founding Chief Rabbi of Efrat and founder and dean of the Ohr Torah Stone Institutions, in the United States and Israel.

Rabbi Riskin’s message is – Ask for Redemption.  “…..Ask for good health. Ask for pleasure from their children. Ask for good sustenance,” says Riskin. “But there’s a story by [the Yiddish writer I. L.] Peretz, ‘Bontshe Shtok,’ Bontshe the Silent, about a man who lived a horrific life and never said a word against God or against man. When he came to heaven, God asked him, ‘You tell me what you want as your reward.’ The only thing he could ask for was a fresh roll and hot butter every morning. And Satan laughed the mordant laugh of victory. Sometimes the world can be so difficult it robs an individual of his dreams and of real vision. He could have asked for redemption.”

To read the full article, click on the link http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/anglo-file/four-rabbis-share-lessons-for-the-jewish-new-year-in-2012.premium-1.464898