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Good morning!

A Cambridge lecturer once gave a talk in Beijing. He began his lecture and, after a sentence or two, stopped in order to let the translator translate. But the translator waved him on saying, "Carry on; I’ll tell you when to stop." So he carried on, uninterrupted, for about 15 minutes. The Chinese interpreter then turned to the audience and said four words in Mandarin. Four words, and then "Carry on. Carry on."

The same thing happened after 15 minutes. He spoke again and translator said four words. The same thing happened after 45 minutes and, at the end, the translator gives three words in Mandarin. As the audience left, he turned to the interpreter and said, "That was unbelievable! I gave a most complicated lecture and you compressed it into those few words. What did you say?"

The translator said, "That was easy. After 15 minutes I said, ‘So far he hasn’t said anything new.’ After 30 minutes I said, ‘He still hasn’t said anything new.’ After 45 minutes I said, ‘I don’t think he’s going to say anything new,’ and after an hour I said, ‘I was right.’

So can we say anything new about religion?

In a few days Jews will be wishing each other a shanah tovah, a happy new year. Leshanot, the verb from which shanah comes, means ‘to repeat’ – mishneh; to do something a second time exactly as you did before. But leshanot also means ‘to change’, to do something a second time differently from the way you did it before. Two words, contraries in English – ‘repetition’ and ‘change’ – in Hebrew are represented by the same word. In other words, every time we repeat our experience we find in it something new.

Lord, help us remember that what is new is old and what is old is also new. Amen