Happy New Year. The word of the year is brain rot. I thought you might want to know that. I hope the word does not reflect accurately on any of you.

The Oxford University Press, publisher of the august OED, the Oxford English Dictionary, has chosen “brain rot” as its word of the year. “It was quite a journey for brain rot,” The New York Times said, the word having triumphed over contenders that included demure, lore, romantasy, dynamic pricing, and slop. Surely, we understand the meaning of demure and lore (as in folklore). Dynamic pricing  sounds as though it should aid consumers but probably doesn’t. Slop has undergone an update — no longer referring to pig feed but to “content generated by artificial intelligence and characterized as being of low quality, inauthentic or inaccurate,” so sayeth The Times.

Slop sounds like a cousin of this year’s chosen word — brain rot, which means the deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, stemming from overconsumption of trivial online content.

Why am I telling you this? I was thinking that perhaps I could assign a word of the year to our shul. What word would I choose? Here are some contenders:

  • unmute: Some of us continue to struggle with that concept on Zoom, which does render it relevant, but dredged up from the past. Not contemporary. Not engaging for all of us. I fact, some of us have actually learned how and when to unmute, so the word comes across as stale, tiresome.
  • tikkun: Now that’s a strong contender, I think. Tikkun Olam is a core concept in Judaism…repair the world, and we have our Tikkun Olam group here within our shul that collects merchandise for CAST and other charities. I like this word, but…no, too familiar.
  • If we look to Yiddish, we could choose sheyn, the word for beautiful, and our shul certainly is that. But I always caution my writing classes to avoid words like beautiful and expensive and other indefinites. What exactly is beautiful? What makes something beautiful? No, the word is not decisive.
  • zissen: Zissen means sweet, and coming to shul is, for me anyway, a sweet experience. A nice experience. Often, a tasty experience. A pleasing and satisfying experience. “A zissen Pesach,” we say over and over again. But as a word of the year — sadly, unimaginative.
  • How about Torah? Torah has defined the Jewish people for more than 5,000 years. Yet in 2025, I think we should start fresh, choose a word that looks not back in history, but ahead to possibilities.
  • A word like hope, for instance. This year, more than any since the State of Israel was established, hope is our collective wish for a negotiated peace in the Middle East. Yes, a strong choice for a word of the year for our shul. And yet, I have misgivings. Hope is an optimistic state of mind with an expectation of a positive outcome, a feeling of confidence. For me, the news discourages hope. The war continues, escalates. Promises are dashed. People say there is always hope, and yet…confidence eludes me.

Perhaps you are losing hope that I will ever alight on a word that satisfies all my concerns — a word with relevance to our congregation, a powerful concept that welcomes us into a pleasing experience that is positive, a word that embodies all of us who embrace its meaning.

Thank you for your patience, yes, I have a suggestion. It may not be a perfect word, but as president of this shul, I find it satisfying. More than any of the tasks I perform to help this shul run well, I seek opportunities to throw open the doors and welcome members and friends, visitors who find us on the Internet or those who vacation here, curious about the plaque on the front of our building that says we are deserving of a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Come in, I say. Welcome. Let us gather.

Yes, gather. That is my choice. Gather embodies all of us today — now — invites us to engage joyously with each other in activities that define us in a communal state of being  — a shul family. Let our history hold us together, and let our ideas for the future make us stronger as we gather here in this shul with a common purpose — to continue.

 

—Sara Bloom