Dena Schusterman’s Rosh Hashanah Message for 2024
Dena Schusterman shares her thoughts and inspiration for the Jewish New Year.
Dena Schusterman is a founder of Chabad Intown, a Jewish educator, and a founding director of both the Intown Jewish Preschool (intownjewishpreschool.org) and the Intown Hebrew School. She and her husband, Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman, are native Californians living in Atlanta for 20 years with their eight children.
One hundred years ago, someone got a smack at synagogue.
Maybe your family called it a spanking or patch; mine called it a frask.
Today, you get a kiss.
What changed?
I don’t know what the social scientists have to say; I can only speak from my experience growing up in a Chasidic home and raising my eight children for the last 28 years—about half a century in all.
My world has become a softer place.
It began less than 300 years ago with the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov. Before Freud and Jung, the Chasidic Masters began disclosing the spiritual and emotional interior world of a human. They were teaching the simplest of Jews how to refine their character and how to live a more wholesome and Godly-aligned life.
But gently.
When asked why, here is the parable they told:
The Sun and Wind argue about who is more powerful; they decide to test their mettle against a hapless man walking in a coat. Who can get him to remove the coat? The wind sends his fiercest gusts, and the man keeps pulling his coat tighter and tighter. Eventually, the howling hurricane forces him to roll on the floor and stubbornly hold onto his protection at all costs. It is now the sun’s turn, and he shines his most impressive rays; in no time, the man organically and effortlessly removes his coat.
We have all been put into this world to toil, refine our characters, and lose our coats— the outer layer and coping mechanisms we’ve “put upon” ourselves in hopes that we will survive— to access our divine soul. This work will evolve the world toward the (Jewish) messianic ideal.
This, the Chasidic Masters taught, is the whole purpose of creation.
Once upon a time, the wind blew (the patch!) and tried to force you to change. Today, we all know that compassion, love, and warmth are the most efficient fuel to make that happen. For ourselves primarily. We know well that you cannot change anyone; you can only change yourself, and then, to wit, you can actually change the world.
So here is to a New Year filled with self-compassion, love, and warmth. I can’t wait to hear about all the growth and change your personal work will bring.
Dena Schusterman is a founder of Chabad Intown, the Intown Jewish Preschool and the Intown Hebrew School, she writes about parenting and applied Torah and Chassidic thought, teaches women’s classes, and is currently working on writing her first book. Dena and her husband, Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman, are native Californians living in Atlanta together with their children.
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