As We Approach the Jewish New Year 5787

As we approach the Jewish New Year, I find myself reflecting on change, purpose, and what it means to continue making my life more meaningful.

I remember the early years at Temple Isaiah. Each New Year, there would be a table filled with literature about Jewish learning opportunities. Every year, I would stop, look through the materials and tell myself, this is the year. I am going to learn more about Judaism. I am going to do something meaningful.

My life was certainly full. I ran my consulting business, grew our pharmacies, raised my children, rescued dogs and birds, gave o my community, and at one point even decided I was going to run marathons on all seven continents—I made it through three.

I was busy living, building, caring for others, and challenging myself in so many ways. But there was one important part of my life I kept putting off: investing in my own Jewish learning.

And then another year would pass. And another. The best intentions were there, but life got in the way.

Finally, years later, a few shuls later, and another child later, I stopped passing the table and took action.

I joined the Melton program, for which I will always be grateful. That introductory year helped me understand how Jewish history and Torah fit together in a way I never had before. It led to more than five years of weekly Torah study with a chavruta.

And somewhere along that journey, I took on something I never could have imagined myself doing: Daf Yomi.

Daf Yomi literally means “a page a day”—the commitment to study a page of Talmud every single day and, over approximately seven and a half years, make your way through the entire Babylonian Talmud.

But describing Daf Yomi as a page a day doesn't begin to describe what the journey actually is.

It is showing up day after day when the material is fascinating and when it is nearly impossible to understand. It is learning arguments among rabbis who lived almost two thousand years ago and discovering how many of their questions remain our questions. It is law, ethics, human behavior, disagreement, faith, relationships, responsibility, and the endless Jewish tradition of asking one more question.

Sometimes learning takes me into a world very far from my own. As a vegetarian and lifelong animal lover, I find the continuous discussions of animal sacrifices challenging. Yet they also remind me that I am entering another time and another world. They make me think about what these practices meant then, what they represented to the people who lived them, and what meaning we can still find in them today.

Learning isn't always about finding what is comfortable or familiar. Sometimes its greatest meaning comes from trying to understand something far removed from our own experience.

And Daf Yomi is relentless. There is always another daf tomorrow.

I became part of the first Daf Yomi learning group for women, by women, studying texts that for generations had largely been the domain of men. I remember being told, essentially, “Maybe study something else. It will be better.”

I didn't.

There is something deeply meaningful about that to me. I did not begin this journey as a Talmud scholar. I began as a woman who, for years, had walked past a table of Jewish learning opportunities saying, maybe this year.

And then I finally said yes.

One page became a week. A week became a month. A month became a year. And now more than six and a half years have passed.

There have been thousands of pages, countless arguments between Abaye and Rava, ideas I understood, plenty I did not, and days when finding the time seemed almost impossible.

But I kept going.

Daf Yomi has taught me something far beyond Talmud: extraordinary accomplishments do not always begin with extraordinary acts. Sometimes they begin simply by showing up again tomorrow.

God willing, next June, that journey will culminate in Jerusalem, together with more than 500 women, as we complete the Daf Yomi cycle.

Just writing those words is emotional for me.

Thank you, Rabbanit Michelle Farber, for having the vision to create the first Daf Yomi learning group for women, by women, and for building an extraordinary community that gave women like me a place at the table. You are an inspiration.

A journey I almost never began will culminate in the heart of Israel, surrounded by hundreds of women who also chose to learn, challenge themselves, persevere, and show up.

For me, there is only one word for that moment:

Hineni. Here I am.

As we also remember Gloria Steinem, I think about what she represented: the power of women to achieve, to challenge expectations, and to refuse to accept that our possibilities have an expiration date.

There is a connection for me between these two worlds. Women's empowerment isn't only about breaking barriers in boardrooms, politics, or public life. Sometimes it is a woman opening a page of Talmud that generations before her may never have imagined she would study and saying: This belongs to me, too.

And perhaps the lesson is even broader. It is the power of anyone, at any age, to keep growing, learning, and becoming.

What has this year brought me?

Helping one daughter as she moves forward after earning her MBA at Booth. Remodeling and re- merchandising my stores. Digging deeper personally. Beginning with another master's degree. Rescuing another Maltipoo Building a new organization dedicated to Israel and the power of women.  And, perhaps most importantly, discovering again that another chapter of life exists not simply to kvetch about getting older, but to thrive in it.

That idea has become especially meaningful through The Golda Project, where we are developing a leadership program for women over 50.

I want other women to recognize what I am continuing to discover myself: there is no age at which we stop having something important to learn, build, contribute, or become. Reinvention isn't reserved for the young. Neither is ambition. Neither is learning. Neither is leadership.

The world certainly has its challenges. So do each of us. But every chapter gives us another opportunity to make a difference.

For too many years, I walked past that table of possibilities and promised myself, Next year.

Not anymore.

As I enter this Jewish New Year, I do so with hope, gratitude, and inspiration. I am not passing the literature of life by anymore.

I am reading it. I am learning from it. I am living it.

And, in whatever ways I can, I am trying to make a difference.

Hineni. Here I am.

L'Shana Tova.