Tuesday was September 11th. Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. If there were ever a few days that bring Ecclesiastes third chapter to life, these are it. “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”—it’s the fourth verse that always jumps out at me.

With all the look backs in the news, one can’t help but be moved by the memories of September 11, 2001. 43 at the time, I knew my world had been irrevocably changed. The relative safety I felt within America’s “secure borders” was now threatened. War had come to us—a shift from our usual export of military might.

Tuesday night I cried. Thursday and Friday of this week I get to laugh and be joyous. I, along with my fellow Jews, am celebrating our new year. It’s a time for reflection and resolution but also a time to laugh and dance. The dancing really gets going at the end of this stretch of fall Jewish holidays when we actually do the Torah two-step during Simchat Torah, the holiday that marks the end and beginning again of the annual cycle of reading the entire scroll.

However, the fourth verse of Ecclesiastes is not just relevant to this week. It speaks directly to the up and down political life that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community must navigate year in and out.

Causing fear, anguish, tears and mourning is the recent revelation that a gang of Neo-Nazis had organized themselves in Israel. Ironic, huh? The group of eight, ages 16-21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They immigrated to the nation established because of Hitler and the holocaust under the Law of Return which allows anyone with a least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen.

The skin-heads lived in and terrorized a town called Petah Tikva where they targeted gays, drug addicts and Jews who outwardly showed their faith—like donning a Kippah, the scull cap many observant Jews wear. Nazis in Israel—truly a time to mourn.

In New Jersey, where it seems a local Methodist organization owns the entire hamlet of Ocean Grove, there’s quite the controversy over whether lesbian or gay couples can use the area’s Boardwalk Pavilion for civil unions. The Methodists who run the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, the group that owns all the land, beach and 1,000 ft. of the sea in this tiny community, consider themselves strict biblical constructionists. They feel biblically justified in their refusal to let civil unions happen on the property.

Just one teeny, tiny glitch—the Association has been enjoying tax-exempt status from the state saving it up to $500,000 a year through the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Program. When Ocean Grove first got the exemption, it said quite clearly that their properties were open to the public and that the pavilion had been used by outside groups.

Needless to say, this one is in the courts. Given the political climate in the Garden State right now—a recent survey showed 63 percent of registered voters were fine with the state legislature upgrading civil unions to full marriage--the two lesbian couples who brought a complaint to the state’s Division of Civil Rights may soon be standing under the pavilion exchanging vows. Instead of tears of anguish and pain, we’ll all be crying tears of happiness when they get to say “I do.”

It’s time dance for a lesbian couple in Maine who are now allowed to jointly adopt a brother and sister they’ve been parenting for the past six years. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court struck down an earlier ruling denying Ann Courtney and Marilyn Kirby the right to both adopt the kids. While they always knew they were a family, now the courts and the legal system agree with them.

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”—this is a constant in our political lives. That’s not to say that straight folks don’t have personal loss and joy. But most of the time, they don’t have to worry about the political implications of their lives—they just weep or laugh, or mourn or dance without having to worry whether their relationship is legal, if their kids are protected or if they’re going to lose their job because of who they love.

May the New Year bring all of us health, happiness and political security.