General Discussion Happy New Year

[RabbiO]

As another secular year heads for the exit and a new secular year waits impatiently at the entrance, I wish you all a happy new year.

[Channalee]

Happy New Year, everyone!
 
As my New Year's gift to you, I present you with a brief excerpt from The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, a weekly Jewish newspaper published in New York City in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
 
The following comes from the first issue of the New Year in 1919 (close to one hundred years ago):
 

Friday, January 3, 1919 – Shebat 2, 5679, The Week in Review
We are entering the nineteen hundred and nineteenth year of the Common Era and the first year of peace after more than fifty months of the most sanguinary war in history.  Peace on earth and good will among men is the ardent desire of the exhausted, suffering peoples.  And with the advent of the New Year which is to mark the beginning of a New Era in the annals of Humanity, it is our heartfelt wish and hope that the world, with the League of Nations as a stepping stone, will come nearer the realization of that Brotherhood of Man which the Jewish Prophets first taught, and toward which all men are earnestly striving.

 
Sadly, not all men were earnestly striving for peace that year.  The very next article relates news of the on-going pogroms in Europe.
 

All hopes that the rumors about anti-Jewish outrages in Poland and Galicia were exaggerated vanish with the detailed report we find in the Copenhagen Yiddish Wochenblatt, which reached New York this week.  The report occupies about four pages, and gives the names of all the identified victims.  Pograms took place in Kazanow, with nine Jews killed and many severely wounded; in Chizin, with two killed; Brezhin, two killed and their bodies mutilated, etc., etc.  The list includes also the cities of Tarnoff, Chakov, Chudetz, Sokolov, Vielopolie, Strazhov, Maidan, Kalgushava, Yavorzania, Zhadno and many others.  Anti-Semitic agitation is unusually strong in Warsaw, and in many other parts of Russian Poland.

 
 
May hatred and cruelty disappear from the earth, and may the New Year in this newer century shine brighter for all.

[Chavak]

Happy New Year to all!

[Jason]

Happy New Year!

[searchinmyroots]

Happy 2019!