As I prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I looked back on my first High Holiday season at Wesleyan in 2007. That week I found a vibrant faith community, as I was able to attend both High Holiday services and the Imam’s sermon marking Ramadan. I was struck at the time by the ways that students from different religious cultures managed to learn from one another while also holding onto distinct traditions.
In this season, we are in some ways in a very different place. It is certainly still true that we have active groups of students, faculty, and staff oriented toward the world, at least in part, through their religious traditions. With foundation support and leadership from our chaplains, we now have an Interfaith Literacy Program that has been working with students to create programs on campus to support deeper understanding of different spiritual, religious, and ethical traditions. This understanding, I expect, will spread across the student body so that people with passionate commitments to different political and moral positions will learn how to have meaningful conversations across their differences.
On many campuses today, and Wesleyan is no exception, these conversations often break down over moral and political positions. The current war in the Middle East has flooded our screens and our minds with horrific images, and it is no wonder that people here want to stop the killing. There are, of course, very different views of how to achieve peace in the region. But reminding ourselves that peace is the goal might turn us toward more constructive dialogues across our differences.
Tonight, along with Jews around the world, I will celebrate the beginning of a new year. We will say “Shana Tova,” meaning simply “good year.” We will think about turning ourselves to better lives, for ourselves and for the communities of which we are a part.
What will make it a good year? More life, more peace.
Shana Tova!