At our Rosh Hashanah table this year, we went around the table to hear each other’s hopes for the new year. When it was my turn to speak, I shared my goal for this year: After a year of obsessively reading the headlines all day long, scrolling through posts about the latest terrifying video of violence or of a protestor shouting for Jews to go back to Poland, worrying about the next move of Netanyahu’s government or Iran-backed terrorist leaders, following the American election polling – after a year of all this, I wanted to enjoy my life a little more. On some days we don’t have the privilege of ignoring the news. But maybe there are some days, more days, on which I could simply enjoy a wake-up hug from my nine-year-old son who won’t be this young forever, or a really good scone, or a big laugh with friends. My hope for this year: maybe I could be more in the present, within my own life, and spend a little less time worrying about the future.
In 2010, I was on a Jewish silent meditation retreat in the Galilee, on a kibbutz in the mountains. We took some time one morning to go out into the fields surrounding the kibbutz, tall grasses and plantings, a broad blue sky, to pray. To pray in our own words. It is a Breslover Chassidic practice called “hitbodedut,” literally you could translate it as “self-aloneness.” It is the practice of speaking directly to God, out loud, in your own words.
It took me a little bit to get going, but I began speaking about my hopes, my problems, my life. After speaking a little while, I arrived at a sort of mantra, a request, a prayer I had, that reached someplace deep in my soul.
“God,” I said. “Please, give me the strength to not know the future.”
And then I laughed. I realized how deep this prayer was and also how almost ridiculous. Of course I cannot know the future! No one can! But please God, give me the strength to be able to accept that I cannot know. Help me to allow myself not to know, and not to always feel I must climb my way out of that not-knowing by worrying. Worrying won’t help guarantee the future will turn out well. Just let me be at peace with the present, as it is, instead of living always in the question of what will be.
I’m thinking about this week’s parashah, Noah, and what Noah and his family go through. Being on the ark for 40 days and nights, wondering, worrying, not knowing how this will all end or even if they will ever see dry land again. I imagine it was impossible to think of anything else. That’s how I’ve sometimes felt this year.
Sylvia Boorstein, a teacher of Western Vipassana Buddhism and a practicing Jew, writes about this:
“Life is so mysterious. Regardless of our planning, it is essentially unpredictable. For years I had a sign on my bathroom mirror to remind me, daily, that ‘Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.’ All the same, I keep spending time trying to fix up now so I’ll be happier in the mythical future.”
Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
This year, I want to more intentionally and joyfully live my life — the one with the people I know, on my street, in my city, in my body – without always making other plans. It is hard, especially on the eve of an important election. There is time for worry. But there also needs to be time for rejoicing.

Rabbi Julia Appel is Clal’s Senior Director of Innovation, helping Jewish professionals and lay leaders revitalize their communities by serving their people better. She is passionate about creating Jewish community that meets the challenges of the 21st century – in which Jewish identity is a choice, not an obligation. Her writing has been featured in such publications as The Forward, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Jewish News, among others.