By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in the Herald Sun

When Rosh Hashanah, Jewish new year, rolls around, there is usually a hum of positive activity in my community. Who are you hosting? How many members of your family will cram around the table? Did you buy some nice honey or some fancy apples this year?

In the lead-up to the new year, we usually wish each other a Shana Tova, a happy and sweet new year.

Yet this year, the Jewish year 5785, there’s a weird dichotomy in the air. After one of the worst years in recent memory, how can we properly celebrate?

With the biggest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust on October 7, dozens of Israeli hostages still in Gaza and a horrific and prolonged war between Israel and Gaza, with so many people suffering, our Australian community has not been immune.

How can I feel happy for a new year when anti-Semitism has risen dramatically? Do I want to take my children to celebrate the new year at a synagogue when security is so tight, and I feel insecure because of threats against our community?

Yet, despite the pain, and the mixed feelings of joy for the coming new year and sadness for the year that was, Jewish history teaches us to be resilient. We have survived as a people for 3500 years because we refuse to be victims. We refuse to lose hope and surrender to the tides of sadness and darkness.

There is a famous Jewish saying, “They tried to kill us, they failed, now we feast!” It’s a reflection of quintessential Jewish logic. Throughout our history, there have been awful periods. Times when we really don’t feel like celebrating. Times when we have been on the brink of starvation during the Holocaust in the ghettos of Europe, or when Jewish people were forcibly converted or expelled from Spain in 1492.

And through it all, we refused to bow out without first celebrating our holidays and traditions.

Our calendar has always grounded us, and this year will be no different. With one of the highest numbers of Holocaust survivors settling in Melbourne after World War II, including my grandfather, my family certainly does not need a reminder to celebrate the good times when they come around.

This year, when I sit with my family to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, I know that despite the pain and the difficult year, I’ll toast to a better year ahead.

Nomi Kaltmann is a Melbourne lawyer and journalist