Dear Friends,
I recently came across a Hasidic story that feels especially appropriate as we begin 2026.
A man came to his rabbi in great distress.
“Rabbi,” he said, “my life feels scattered. I keep resolving to change, to be better, to live with more intention, but year after year I find myself in the same place.”
The rabbi listened carefully and then asked, “Tell me, how do you begin a journey?”
The man was perplexed. “What do you mean? Weren’t you listening to me?”
“I was,” the rabbi replied. “So let me ask it this way: When you travel, do you begin by packing your bags, or by deciding where you’re going?”
“Of course I decide where I’m going first,” the man said. “Only then do I know what to bring.”
The rabbi nodded. “That’s my point. Too often we think change begins with effort. But real change begins with direction. If you don’t know where you’re trying to go, all the effort in the world will only take you in circles.”
As we enter this new year, that story resonates deeply.
Just a few months ago we marked the Jewish New Year, which is rooted not in fireworks or countdowns, but in cheshbon hanefesh, deep and honest soul-accounting. And yet, when the secular calendar turns, many of us find ourselves asking similar questions:
What do I want to change?
What do I want to carry forward?
What am I ready to leave behind?
Change doesn’t begin with grand resolutions or heroic promises. It begins with a simpler and braver question:
Who am I trying to become?
What direction do I want my life to move in?
Shabbat, of all moments, gives us permission to ask that question without urgency or noise. Not to fix everything. Not to reinvent ourselves overnight. But to gently orient our hearts toward more kindness, greater presence, and deeper gratitude.
If we can do that, if we can begin with direction, then perhaps this new year, whether secular or sacred, won’t simply pass by us. Perhaps it will actually take us somewhere.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Daniel Cohen