Tomorrow night we will celebrate two important milestones. They both have a similar shoresh (root) but they are different.Tomorrow night, at approx 72 minutes past sunset (click here to get the exact time), we will say baruch hamavdil ben kodesh l'chol... and a few other brachot by the light of a braided candle. We will be doing havdallah. We will be creating a separation between the sacred and the everyday. On Shabbis (Shabbat, Sabbath) we hold our actions to a higher standard than usual. Whether that means you don't drive or cook or turn on light or tear toilet paper... or it means that you spend time with your family and chill out... no matter how you do it, you make Shabbat a special time. (And if you don't, think about trying it sometime. Start simple and slow... maybe choose to not spend any money or do things that you feel are work or maybe... shocking... turn off your cell phone. Trying it for one 26 hour period. It will change your life, it changed mine!) And at the end of this special time, at the end of Shabbat, we must have a ritual to remind us that we can take the (w)holy feeling that we got from that time forward into our week but the week has a different feel to it. Havdallah creates a distinction. It derives from the same root as l'havdil which means to create a separation between something incredible and something ordinary.So shortly after havdalah (okay, a few hours later), we will ring in the secular new year. The Jewish calendar already flipped years back at Rosh Hashanah but the Gregorian calendar will change tomorrow night at midnight. You kinda can't avoid the celebrations. The parties all night long, the goofy glasses that say 2012, the drunks, Dick Clark on tv despite his health... It's fun, it's secular yes, but it's still fun. This is another time l'havdil... to separate. Not from something incredible to something ordinary but from something that has become routine and maybe even boring to a promise of something new and better and extraordinary.Baruch hamavdil ben kodesh l'chol - Blessed are you who creates a separation between sacred and common. Perhaps at midnight tomorrow night we should say baruch hamavdil ben chol l'kodesh or even baruch hamavdil ben zakain l'hadash -blessed are you who creates a separation between old and new - or even... baruch hamavdil ben h'avar uvain ha'atid - Blessed are you who created a separation between the past and the future.May you all be blessed in this up coming new year. See you in 2012!
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