Shana Tova – happy Jewish New Year – to Palestine, from Alternative Jewish Voices and friends.
2021 has been the most difficult year.
May the coming year be much sweeter.
May you live in dignity,
freedom and equality,
with the full measure of your rights
and the full expression of your culture.
May your homes be safe and your journeys undisturbed. May those who have been driven out choose whether to return.
May Palestinian nationality be recognised, so that you speak as of right and manage the resources of your land wisely.
We wish your children healthy food and clean water, schoolbooks and playgrounds and art, and the knowledge that they will sleep safely in their beds at night.
We wish you health in this time of pandemic.
We wish you could just be, living your lives without violence and oppression. We wish you normalcy – work, rest, untroubled sleep.
We wish you each a vote and a voice to determine the transformation that must occur for everyone who lives between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. May it become a shared space governed as all of its citizens see fit, unscarred by ugly walls and checkpoints.
May you enter into the conversations that will realise such change.
We wish energy and impatience to all of us around you, as we escalate the principled pressure for transformation. For as long as it is radical to insist upon the full measure of Palestinians’ equal human rights and the unexceptional application of international law; for that long we will continue.
May all of our religions be respected, loved and protected. That, too, is our shared work.
Let 2021 have been the worst year.
We can make the coming year much sweeter.
Marilyn Garson
Fred Albert
David Weinstein
Judith Reinkin
Lynn Jenner
Sue Berman
Margalit Toledano
Justine Sachs
Sh'ma Koleinu - Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ) 