Happy 2022! As we enter a new month and a new secular year this week, let’s take a look at some of the more “popular” New Year’s Resolutions….and see what our tradition might have to teach us.

Get organized.

As our kids are heading back to school (on Zoom and in person), and we are heading back to work and routines, perhaps we are thinking about how to manage it all—the schedules, the driving, the paper, the endless to-do lists, the laundry, the general “clutter” of life.

If I truly had the answers, I’d be on the lecture circuit; I’d have a podcast, a planner—a whole brand. Instead, I am a constant work in progress—buying new planners and listening to podcasts just like some of you. But I cannot help but think about our Jewish calendar, and the rhythms of Shabbat, as a guide to our weekly lives…and perhaps, a clue towards organization?

There is, in our liturgy, a Psalm for each day—assigned as early as the Second Temple period. There are a number of texts which connect the Psalms to the days of the week, but as the New Year begins and I think about getting organized (or re-organized), I am drawn to this text from the Babylonian Talmud (Rosh HaShanah 31a), which links the Psalms of the Day with the acts of Creation:

It has been taught: ‘R. Judah said in the name of R. Akiba: On the first day of the week what [psalm] did the Levites say?

The one that starts “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,” because God took possession and gave possession and was sole ruler in the universe. On the second day what did they say? “Great is the Lord and highly to be praised,” because God divided the works and reigned over them like a king. On the third day they said, “God stands in the congregation of the Divine”, because God revealed the earth in wisdom and established the world for the community.

Continuing through the week into Shabbat, the text reminds us that—in the words of some of my favorite organizers—“it’s a system!” Creation was not haphazard; it involved an order, and a plan, and separating one task from another.

What if we looked at our week the same way?

— Rabbi Sari Laufer