A Year of Wonderful New Beginnings

Though I wrote the following for a different New Year than January first it is what I sent out to my very religious large extended Jewish family in September. Are they conservative? Yes, but then, I think not. People can believe in their personal interpretation of God and not be ‘stiff necked’ about it. The response I got from all whom I sent my yearly card and note to was both affirming and moving. I hope it is for you as well.

L'shanah tovah ("for a good year")

There are two music stands in my graphic this year. One holds up a piece of sheet music on the piano. The other is flattened down to create a table for the traditional holiday crudités. There is a hollowed - out apple filled with honey, a dipper, and a slice of apple already anointed with the wishes for a sweet year. The ripped off piece of challah bread represents a year of fulfillment. There is also some cinnamon for a bit of spice with the sweet and a small amount of salt for the bread to give extra flavor while acknowledging the tears of those less fortunate than we.
 
This was a very special year for Andy and me. We have a love we share with each other, family, friends, but there is more. Something simply and quickly happened that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. At the end of June, just a few weeks before our twenty-sixth year together, we were accepted and made ‘an equal' with all other citizens of this country. Not long ago, at one of our last visits before his death, my Uncle Milt informed me that my father's older brother, my uncle Ben, was gay. Uncle Milt added that the miserable lonely life that Ben had was not going to happen to me. This is in part why, though I did not know it previously, my family is so close to me. Yes, I am loved and there can be no greater gift.
 
I created the sheet music graphic from many sources of notation, Hebrew characters, Yiddish pronunciations, historical notes, and even graphically aging and folding the paper on which the music is written. The composition shown is ‘Rozinkes mit Mandlen,' Raisins and Almonds from Abraham Goldfaden's 1882 Yiddish operetta "Shulamith." It is a metaphoric lullaby to quiet the infant until such time that he will grow free to prosper- in the lyrics: selling more than just the dried fruit and nuts carried in a cart by his goat. The song gained great significance in the Nazi camps when it was paraphrased for both hope and despair.
 
The time before the Supreme Court decided ‘equal rights for all' was a bit like the time leading up to freedom from Egyptian rule or wondering if there is any possibility of release during the times of ‘Arbeit Macht Frei,' Work makes freedom. How many phrases like this or ‘separate but equal' are employed to gloss over a lack of truth. But even a lie repeated enough gets to appear to be truth. This is not a usurping of undisputed tragedies to puff up a lesser one. HaShoah,’ the catastrophe,’ could not have happened if the Jewish minority was not treated for centuries like inferiors and vermin, feeding on others. Being treated this way throughout the world was not freedom, though it was not imprisonment - or was it?
 
The piano and stand represent my spouse who can create and comprehend music. The other stand represents me. I can be taught to understand the beauty of the music but my service is to keep the traditions and to use the inspiration from a developing eye to create my own beauty and to share this with others.
 
Andy and I wish you "L'Shana Tova v'Tikatevu," for a good and prosperous new year 'as equals.'