what it means to me

tonight marked the beginning of the jewish new year, which for most of us who are more jew-ish than observant, it is yet another opportunity to get a head start on all those resolutions we have probably broken since we swore them on jan '01 of the previous new year according to the christian calendar. yep, us chosen folk get not one but two shots to swear off smoking, or resolve to exercise more and eat junk food less. both new years symbolize renewal; a chance to be reborn and reinvent ourselves. as humans we spend every day either indulging in or fighting our vices. often we feed our temptations with very little recognition of their consequences until that one day out of the year when we are forced into a tete a tete with our flaws and we convince ourselves that next year will be different. we promise ourselves that we will be a little less, well, human. we are after all nothing, if not imperfect in every way. so tonight I accompanied my fantastic friend, franny, to these crazy hippied-out services she goes to to welcome in the jewish new year. they were unconventional to say the least; held in a winery instead of a temple, led by a new-agey gay man who was more guru than rabbi, and accompanied by a band dressed like the cast of mad men, most with multi-colored hair cuts...i liked it right away. i grew up in synagogues, but i thrived on praying outdoors. never religious but naturally humanistic, i resented stuffy crowded rooms of worship but was easily enticed by acoustic guitar harmonies and outdoor services. i got my fix of this at the jewish camp i spent every summer from age 8 to 18 at. i matured and grew in those wooden cabins and rocky roads. i had heart-break and accomplishment, pangs of loneliness and exalted freedom. i went from student to teacher, child to adult. i endured a full cycle of being and i know i am better for it. the feeling i have when i think of that place is a feeling of home that connects me to my mother, my father, my sister, and every ancestor i've ever had. it makes me feel big in a small community of people i would see year after year, and small in an infinite community of my cultural relatives. sometimes you can just show up somewhere and know all the words to the songs, even if the tune has slightly changed, like tonight. a room full of frizzy-haired adolescents, skinny-jeaned hipsters with suspenders and yamachas, well dressed mothers with better dressed children. whatever--this is new york, and we all came out to see the alternative services with the guru rabbi guy. he talked a lot about that whole renewal thing, and he said it wasn't about making huge changes, it was just an opportunity to be better. we have that ability, as people to always be a little bit better, cause we just want peace, right? we could all just be better and maybe be that much closer to what we want. i have this amazing friend named caissie who is a performer and through her work has been able to do a lot of international travel of late. i woke up with an email from her wishing me and some of her other friends a happy jewish new year. caissie is in morocco right now and she is one of those people that when you meet her you are inspired to be better because she just radiates kindness and love. she's seen a good amount of the western hemisphere in the past few months, and she finished her email by saying that what she's really learned by this journey of travelling and performing abroad is that the world is cool as fuck. i think that's just it. during the service i thought of my parents in california and my sister and my friend standing next to me and caissie in morocco and all the places i've been and the strangers in the room and i just thought, yeah, the world is cool as fuck. i walked back to my apartment tonight under a sky lit with two beaming lights memoralizing two towers that once stood and the many people that stood inside them almost 9 years ago. if we could all just be a little better...

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