It’s the New Year — according to the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 20) marks a turning of the calendar to 5778.
While it’s still 2017 in my world, I have to concur, it makes sense to start a new year in September.
Fall seems like a good time to reset the clock, sign up for courses and make resolutions.
I’ve just returned from three weeks of vacation and, as is usually the case after time away from my regular routine, I come back with new goals and a fresh perspective — it lasts about a week.
This trip involved body surfing in Lake Huron (it’s amazing how big those waves get) touring the parliament buildings in Ottawa, celebrating my nephew’s beautiful wedding in Toronto and even taking in a University of Michigan football game. I have to pause on this one as it’s quite the phenomenon. We’re talking attendance of 111,000. Just for perspective, the average attendance for a BC Lions game is 20,000. Even the NFL’s Detroit Lions only get about 60,000 — Go Blue.
But among all the wonderful sights and sounds we took in, perhaps the most surprising was Detroit.
Before we went, people seriously questioned our judgement. “Don’t get shot,” was a common refrain.
In fact, these days the biggest tourist attraction in the Motor City is “poverty porn.” People cruise (in locked cars) down economically decimated streets to gawk at the carnage. And, indeed, there is carnage, not just in the rough areas of town. Large, stately, brick homes stand with busted windows and blackened doors. It looks like a fire had gutted the inside as people had simply walked away from the homes they could no longer afford.
But the surprising part of Detroit was discovering a gem in the heart of town in the form of the Detroit Institute of Art, (DIA). It’s a vast art gallery and in it are the angry and inspiring murals by Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist and ardent socialist of the 1930s.
He had been commissioned to paint the Ford plant that defined Detroit at the time; he did so with intensity, humour and a passion for social justice.
Also at the DIA was a powerful, special exhibit, “The Art of Rebellion: Black Art of the Civil Rights Movement.”
We toured the DIA just after visiting the Motown Museum and Hitsville USA, the little house where Berry Gordy started Motown Records, a label that didn’t just pump out hits but celebrate the spirit of a community that had long been repressed. (Fun fact: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was first delivered in Detroit and recorded by Motown Records.)
Granted, Detroit faces some massive challenges, but as Michael Sachs of the Bayit synagogue says, as we move into the new year, let’s talk about what works. We make more of what we focus on.
Rabbi Adam Rubin, of Beth Tikvah Congregation, notes this is a time of spiritual “account-taking” and an opportunity to “return to our best selves.”
If a tourist can find gems in Detroit, surely we can find gems in ourselves and each other. Here’s to a New Year’s resolution to keep focused on the gems.
