Another year, another wish

A friend of mine, an English teacher here in Modi’in, posted a very amusing, and very interesting status update the other day on Facebook. She wrote that she had confused a lot of her students when she told them that she “would see them next year....and that she wasn't coming back until next year”. Neither this friend nor the students at the school where she teaches are religiously observant, and she was amazed at how insignificant the secular, or more accurately Gregorian New Year is in Israeli culture.

This concept fascinates me. While there are the standard New Years parties in some of Israel, it really isn’t such a big deal as it always has been in America.

Interesting side note – in Israel, New Years is called Sylvester – ironically named for an extremely anti-Semitic pope and subsequent saint who lived and reigned in the 4th century CE.

I was never so into New Years, even when I lived in the States. I go to the parties, sometimes, because any excuse for a party was good enough for me. But essentially it didn’t really matter to me so much – other than having to remember what year to write on the dates of checks, papers, etc. Other than that, nothing….

But growing up in America, New Years was a big deal. The sales, the New Years Resolutions, the “year in review”, and so on and so forth.

And even though it never really “grabbed” me so much, I do like the idea of taking stock of the past year while looking ahead to the coming one. Yes, that is a big part of what we do during Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), but living in the “modern” world we do relate to the Gregorian dates, and we do remember things that happened according to the non-Jewish years, so I guess it makes sense to take stock of this kind of year as well.

I started 2010 looking for work – just like I’m ending it. In between I worked for nearly 11 months at a company which had a lot of good things to it and I gained a lot from it, but I wasn’t a bad thing that it came to an end, and as I mentioned in this blog, I have a lot of high hopes for new things to come up very soon.

This year saw my kids grow tremendously – they are at the ages when a year makes a world of difference. Our older daughter, Revital, has been having the best year socially since she started grade school, and we have gotten to see her blossom, and Limor, our 6-year old is developing by leaps and bounds and is every day developing into such a special little girl.

There is a lot that I hope to be able to say by the end of 2011 – I hope that I have a better control over my temper, which sometimes gets the best of me (I’ve been working on that a lot, and plan to continue). I hope to finally get myself both serious and consistent about losing weight.

Obviously, I would love for 2011 to be the year that I can turn my recently-found passion for writing into a full-time endeavor - whether in the professional realm of work, or with the blogging, or whatever. The more I write the more I find that I need to write.

My hope for myself, my family, my friends, and everybody is that 2011 is able to be a year of continued growth, loving, learning, and living life to the fullest. May we all be able to look back on 2010 with warm memories and smiles, and look ahead to the future for even better.

Happy New Year, everybody!