L'Shanah Tovah!

Rosh HaShanah is coming! It is crazy how time has flown by. It's September! This time of year always brings a smile to my face. :D All the memories every year come back, and I just can't help it! There is 1 short week left until our family celebrates the "Feast of Trumpets" and wish everyone a good year. I am so excited!!!!!

       When we wish each other a Shanah Tovah, a good year, we think of the Hebrew word shanah, or year, and extend greetings for a good year. But the Hebrew root - shin, nun, heh - has another meaning as well, from the verb le-shanot, to change. Further, the same root - shin nun heh - also denotes repetition, as in the name of the fifth book of the Torah, Mishneh Torah, the repetition of the Torah.
        In other words, a shanah tovah, a good year, is a year of le-shanot, of change, of doing things differently and better. And it also denotes a year of repetition, of relearning all the old lessons that our tradition of truth and wisdom has been teaching us for many centuries.
       Shanah is a unique word. And may the new shanah be a unique year, one in which there is both repetition of the old, and change for the better. ~Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins