I want to start the new year by naming the elephant in the room.

This year some of us have been deeply worried about Israel and Israelis. We can’t stop thinking about October 7 and Israeli hostages in Gaza. Maybe we’ve lived in Israel. Maybe we have family or friends in Israel and they know someone who was killed or taken prisoner. Compounding all of that, maybe we feel like the world has turned on Israel, maybe on all Jews. We’re worried about Jews worldwide at increased risk. Every anti-Zionist slogan, or boycott of a Jewish or Israeli business, or campus protest, leaves us feeling like the world doesn’t want us to bring our whole Jewish self to the table. 

And some of us have been a wreck because of Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon. Maybe we have a familial connection there, or maybe our families are Arab or Muslim. We yearn for a ceasefire; maybe we’ve been standing out for one in the Williamstown roundabout every Friday. Compounding all of that, we feel alienated from the sector of the Jewish community that seems not to feel what we feel. Maybe we aren’t comfortable with Zionism, or maybe with any kind of nationalism, and we wonder how to find home in a Jewish community that doesn’t see this the way we do.

The news out of the Middle East is not good. (Understatement.) It looks like the wider regional war -- the one everyone's been saying all year that we need Israel and Iran to avoid -- is beginning. Which might mean that, as horrendous as the last 360 days have been, we may be headed for worse.

It's a good thing I spent part of this year learning how to recognize and work with trauma reactions, including my own. The panicked feeling in my stomach, the shortness of breath, the tears banging at the back of my eyelids, the paralysis and fear -- hello, trauma. I don't want to welcome you back in.

But I've learned that trying to pretend trauma away doesn't work. And neither does squeezing my eyes shut and begging God to make the world different. The only path forward is to soften, thank the trauma for trying to take care of me, and use my meditation tools to help the grief and fear drain.

You know what I can't fix? The Middle East. Anything happening in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, or anywhere else. (While we're at it: I can't fix American xenophobia, one political party's plans to deport tens of thousands, or the likelihood of post-election violence, either.)

I can't fix climate crisis denialism, or the impacts of Hurricane Helene, or rising antisemitism and Islamophobia and transphobia, or any of the things that are ratcheting up anxiety until I feel -- so many of us feel! -- like an over-tightened guitar string that's about to break. I cannot fix any of it.

So I make challah dough, listening to psalms, softly singing the Thirteen Attributes. "Adonai, adonai, el-rahum v'hanun -- Yud heh vav heh, compassion and tenderness..." I run the dishwasher and put away clean warm plates. I set the table for the new year 5785, literally and metaphorically.

I think of everyone whose holiday table will be incomplete. I think of everyone who won't have a table or a place to celebrate at all. I think of scenes of devastation, from the Middle East to Appalachia, and I pray for safety and tranquility and kindness. I pray for all of us to be able to take care of each other.

Most of us don't have the power to fix the big things that are broken. It's simply not in our hands. But we can fix what we can reach. We can find the next good thing to do. "We must love one another or die," Auden wrote. It's and, really. The second part of that line is inevitable. The first part is up to us.