So many friends have been expressing something close to despair at the state of the world and especially at the state of our country, and sometimes I agree.  But then I think of the history of my immediate family, of how my parents escaped from Danzig by the skin of their teeth on the night before the invasion of the Nazis, of how my father probably had no hope or energy to escape after being beaten and left to die on the street.  I’m sure my mother had to convince him that escape was possible, that another kind of life was possible.  And they found themselves in England and were sent to a farm to raise pigs.  The wonder and comfort he must have felt when the pigs learned to come to his window in the morning asking to be fed.   

That moment of renewal – that is what I wish for all the world in this new year.