By Valerie Brown, Community Educator. Dear Friends, I just started a new school year, pursuing of my Masters in Jewish Education, and I'm already feeling overwhelmed with all the things I want to get done this year: personally, academically, and professionally. And of course, all my human habits that get in the way of being the productive robot person who can do it all.

Happy Rosh Chodesh / New Moon and new month of Nissan. This is the month when we feel the transition into springtime and celebrate Passover.

At the seder meal we ask, "how is this night different from all other nights?" This year, we have many more answers than we normally do. Everything feels different. Many of us are filled with anxiety and uncertainty, scarcity and fear around health concerns and financial (in)security.

In the intermediary days of Sukkot, I took myself to one of my favorite places, DaySpring Retreat Center in Germantown, MD for a Quiet Day. Early in the day, I walked around outside on the beautiful grounds and by the pond, I just started speaking outloud to God. This is a chassidic form of meditative prayer called Hitbodedut, in which one speaks aloud spontaneously, offering the words of the heart.

During the Art & Visioning workshop I led on January 1, I had a few moments to sit down, breath and do my own artwork. The room was full of participants working on their own visions - drawing, writing, or searching for images that spoke to them from the collage supplies. My teachers in Rabbinical School used to tell us how inspiring it was to walk into the Beit Midrash (the house of study) and see all of the students studying together in chevruta (with a partner) translating texts, deciphering meanings, studying commentaries. The room was abuzz with students trying to figure things out, make sense of things, understand each other's opinions and reasoning for how to read a line of text as a statement or a question. The sights and sounds of the Beit Midrash inspired my teachers and reminded them why they loved learning Jewish texts so much.

New Years are opportunities to check in with yourself, to take stock and do some reflection and to also set intentions. But I am not a fan of "new years resolutions" which often come from a place of self-judgement, self-criticism and self-restraint. These resolutions often set us up to be hard on ourselves.

Rather than setting a resolution, I see each New Year - and each new month in the Jewish calendar - as good times to set intentions.

Like the winter festivals of light in cultures all around the world, Hannukah falls at the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. Not only are the nights growing longer but they are darker too, moving toward winter solstice. Additionally, Hannukah falls on the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, at a time when the moon is waning in a further darkening night sky.

Hannukah encourages us to literally light a fire in the darkness, to kindle light at the darkest time year. For those in the southern Hemisphere where Hannukah falls in the summer time (what?!), the lighting of candles has a similar yet inverse meaning of celebrating, growing, and expanding light.

When I served as the rabbi in Fairbanks, Alaska, during the summer of 2011, I experienced my first midnight sun. It was so bright most nights that I placed tin foil over the window to get some shut-eye before I discovered blackout curtains. But then I came to understand it was a magic time. We'd light candles for Shabbat at a fixed time since sundown was long after we'd gone to sleep. Gardens were lush and friends picked veggies for me at 11pm as a parting gift after a late evening.