2024: Remember yesterday, imagine tomorrow

The first month of the year, January, takes its name from the Roman god Janus (or Ianus), the god of gates and doorways, the god of beginnings and endings. Janus has two faces, one looking back and one looking forward, one remembering the year that was and the other imagining the year that now opens the door to the future. 

To be sure, there are times when the year begins with a foreboding sense of repeat.

The 1960s was a very tumultuous decade: massive protests for civil rights, exploitation of the earth’s resources, opposition to unjust wars, the younger generation’s rebellion (which resulted in lowering the voting age from 21 to 18), the gap between those who screamed “America, love it or leave it” and those who responded “America, change it or lose it”, and three major assassinations in American history; viz., President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.

Today, 60 years later, we similarly continue to protest racism, misogyny, antisemitism and xenophobia; we suffer from climate change; we are angered by wars sparked by Russia and Hamas; we witness the younger generation’s political rebellion (meaningfully expressed by “Rock the Vote”); we feel trapped in the gap between right and left; and we are disgusted by the assassination of people’s reputations and the American dream.

In his State of the Union address, delivered on January 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson outlined his vision of the Great Society in which cities engender a caring community, natural resources of the countryside are appreciated and safeguarded, the poor find affordable health care, and children of all identities have the tools to scan the farthest horizons of thought and imagination. 

For the most part, there was agreement with LBJ's vision. Paralleling today, the details of implementation were so politically charged and debated along partisan lines that political leaders lost sight of the vision that was meant to benefit and strengthen the next generation.

The Messianic Age, based on the Hebrew Bible and envisioned by the ancient Rabbinic Sages, reflects LBJ’s Great Society. The city is a place to model community, natural wonder is affirmed in the countryside, and the classroom is where the next generation is encouraged to question, search, dream, and imagine. In Isaiah’s vision of the world as it should be, swords and spears will be forged into farming tools, and there will be no need to mobilize for war. The world will be filled with civility and respect, health care and harmony, protection for nature, and support for each other.

Even when the Sages heatedly debate interpretations and details of implementation, they are guided by a principle that should be embraced by the leaders of today: Individual details must never be considered so important that we lose the overall images of imagination.

Let’s hope that 2024 will be a year breaking the chain of repeated history, a year in which we take steps toward the world we imagine, a year of transformation of the world from what “has been” yesterday and what “is” today to what “ought to be” tomorrow. 

And the process of taking the next step toward that transformation is called… “Shalom”!