How higher might the deep mystical fact we’d like right now be represented than by Dictionary.com’s selection of “6-7” as 2025’s phrase of the 12 months? This was insightful not due to the mind rot that produced this nonsense phrase so beloved by each human between the ages of 5 and 15 — together with my very own children laughing uproariously as they shout it throughout the dinner desk — however due to the revelation that I believe the viral meme is gesturing towards.
As a rabbi, it’s a part of my job to stretch into the realms of the fantastical to search out which means. My ancestors may need had bushes aflame and valleys of bones come to life; I’ve web slang. And to me, 6-7 (pronounced “six seven”) illuminates our bedrock want on this perilous second.
As governments tighten their fists, wars escalate and compassion erodes from public life, the eager for justice, therapeutic and decency has reached a fever pitch. People are furiously calling their elected officers, voting in document numbers, turning out for among the largest protests in our nation’s historical past, donating to political and nonprofit causes that assist essentially the most weak, and obstructing and doxxing the immigration brokers who’re kidnapping folks off the road and capturing unarmed civilians.
And you realize what? We’re exhausted. The final 12 months have been endlessly painful. How are we going to maintain going?
6-7.
That’s the reply. That’s the system, the traditional magic ratio for surviving a polycrisis: Six elements noticing the brokenness and dealing to repair it, and one half “mayain olam haba” — Hebrew for “a style of the rising world” — for a complete of seven elements.
Mayain olam haba is a apply throughout the Jewish mystic custom of kabbalah that invitations seekers to sink into the liberation we lengthy for; to show our consideration to every part on the earth that’s already simply, stunning and compassionate; and to play “as if” for every part that’s not there but. If we have been actually free, if we lived on the earth we longed for, how would we spend our time? Resting, consuming scrumptious meals with pals, making love, wandering in nature, studying, dancing, singing collectively, sitting in meditation. Effectively, that’s what we’re invited to do with one-seventh of our lives.
Within the Jewish custom, we schedule mayain olam haba with Shabbat: at some point every week, after six days of effort, once we disengage from the world’s brokenness to put down the neurological pathways of residing sooner or later world we crave. As a result of if we by no means expertise the world we’re working towards, how will we acknowledge items of it after they arrive? How will we all know we’re heading in the right direction as we work? And the way will we survive till the work is accomplished? As certainly one of my favourite Yiddish expressions says: “Till you get to the bar, you additionally want a drink.”
You don’t want to look at Shabbat or learn Torah or be Jewish to apply the non secular artwork of 6-7. You simply must dedicate six-sevenths of your life to attempting to enhance the world and shield one-seventh of your life for pleasure, connection and relaxation — time that reminds you what all of the wrestle is for. And also you don’t have to look at that one-seventh of relaxation in any good approach.
As a mum or dad with a more-than-full-time job, I’m not preaching from any monastic tower. I’m within the trenches with you. That’s precisely why I discover that taking a break from emails, social media and conferences to dedicate one-seventh of my week to their reverse — lighting candles, having a tasty dinner, sinking into an important TV present, cuddling with my associate, sleeping in late, meditating, studying, taking part in board video games with my children or sitting on the entrance stoop and watching the leaves on the town timber transfer within the wind — offers me a small however actual expertise of the extra easeful, pleasureful life I’m working towards for myself and for all folks. It’s the properly from which I drink all week. The division between these six days and this seventh day is on the coronary heart of my life.
So sure, let’s embrace 6-7 because the response to all that was unsuitable in 2025, the mantra for bringing 2026 nearer to proper residing and the roadmap for all of the years to come back. As a result of possibly it’s not nonsense in any respect. Possibly it’s a message out of the mouths of babes to remind us easy methods to maintain going when the world looks like an excessive amount of. Let’s hear. Let’s proceed to throw ourselves six-sevenths of the time into the painful work of repairing what’s damaged. And let’s dedicate one-seventh of our lives to experiencing the rising world. On this approach, might we preserve the power we have to construct it.
Jericho Vincent is the founding rabbi of Temple of the Stranger, a Brooklyn-based group rooted in inclusive kabbalah. They’re the writer of the memoir “Reduce Me Unfastened.”
