Everything I Ever Wanted To Know I learned From...

Non-Jews.

Yair Lapid (son of the anti-religious, Shinui party boss, Tommy Lapid), in his weekly Column in Yediot Achronot shares with us his list of New Year Resolutions.

Before getting to his list, he offers us an insight into the origin of the New Year Resolution:

Gentiles have a number of wonderful ideas to their credit, like landing on the moon for example or (for the sake of maintaining a certain level on this blog, I left out the rest of his sentence)...

Another of their good ideas is the list of New Year resolutions. Every time a New Year comes around (and for them it’s the first of January for some reason) the entire world from New York to New Zealand scribbles a note to themselves, on which they record the 10 things they want to achieve in the next year. The note is then inserted into a signed envelope and taped to the mirror where it threatens you all year.

You know, it's funny. For some reason I always thought that it was in fact the Jewish People who introduced to the world the concept of the New Year Resolution.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I actually thought that the source was from the Torah (Bible), where it spoke of how the 10th day of the month of Tishrei (Yom Kippur) was to be a day of atonement, fasting and repentance, and that this was in fact the source of doing an annual soul searching and coming up with resolutions as to how we would try to improve ourselves in the coming year.

Thanks, Yair, for clearing that one up for me. I can't even bear to imagine going on thinking that anything that we might do here in Israel actually has its roots in the Torah and Jewish tradition...

Israel
Zionism
Judaism