Tonight is the beginning of Rosh Ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year.

According to “the rabbis” (which makes me think that you can say whatever you want as long as you preface it with, “according to the rabbis”), it is the birthday of the world.  The world took 6 days (or 30 billion years, whatever) to be created, so which day is the birthday of the world?

According to our rabbi, who said, “according to the rabbis” (so we know she could have been making this up), we celebrate the day on which humankind was created, which is the 6th day (or, if you are thinking the evolution of homo sapien sapiens, 30,000 or so years ago).

The rabbi’s point (among many in her drash) is that we are not celebrating anything particularly Jewish.  We are celebrating all humankind.  As we are getting increasingly (and depressingly) politically polarized and religiously sectarian the world over, the invitation to step outside of these paradigms and celebrate the whole wide world is exhilarating.

Adam and Eve (or Joe and Jane Homo Sapien Sapien) were not Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jainist or anything.  They were humans.

As the rabbi went on in her drash about the importance of supporting the Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, she invited people to voice their issues with it.  There were those in the congregation (happily, just a few vocal ones) that couldn’t step back from the polarization.

As Jews with non-mainstream sexual orientations and gender identities (I am a little too middle-aged to understand all the complexities here), I couldn’t imagine that anyone in the congregation would not see the opposition to the cultural center as fear-mongering and scapegoating.  But there it was.  Complacency and fear are the enemies of the ideals that make America great.  And they make Jews forget that “we were strangers in the land of Egypt” and enslaved.  This sad devolution of the American Jewish experience fell starkly against the backdrop of Jews marking the birth of humankind.

I must admit that I started the evening and this holiday “just going through the motions,” with my head still in a deal at the office.   But this concept hit me in a way that unexpectedly woke up my emotional need to “connect” (to what, I am not yet sure).

So, even though it is a Jewish Holy Day, I am celebrating everyone, everywhere (ok, I draw a personal line at the extremists of any faith or philosophy, into which categories I include the left wingnuts of the Democratic Party).

That is a good feeling.