Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

The Jewish Audacity of Light

This week, we are all holding trauma, brokenness and worry. As I sat last night, I thought I don’t have sweet and easy comforts for you, but I can share something that comes from my heart. In the opening lines of the Parshat Bereshit that we read this week it says, Bereshit Barah Elohim et Hashamayim ve’et  ha’aretz, In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. The pesukim continue, Ve’ha’aretz hayta tohu va’vohu ve’chosech al penei tehom, and the earth was wild and waste and there was darkness over the deep.

The creation story of our tradition tells us that before there was any order or creation there was a total chasm of nothingness. This void is described by two enigmatic words, tohu and vohu. These words try to describe the nothing, the void and emptiness that preceded the unfolding of creation. Some even translate tohu and vohu as chaos, a kind of empty no-man’s-land, so empty, dark and chaotic that it is beyond our comprehension. From this space of nothing, empty and chaos, God creates a world of order and beauty by saying, ‘let there be light.’  And suddenly or, light comes into the world.

This is our grand Jewish story, our poem, our song for how we imagine the world came into being. From these opening lines we derive a very important life principle which has proven itself to be true in Jewish history again and again; there was chaos… and there was light.

Sometimes the world as we know it, where the sun rises and the sun sets and things are safe, predictable and secure, is overthrown. This is what happened in Israel last week. Now it may feel as if our world will never be the same. This is a tohu and vohu moment, a moment of chaos and void, where everything seems to become dark and terrifying. The secure fabric of our life feels gone. 

I have lived through moments like this before. I was in New York during 9/11 and I remember the terror of that time. A few days after it happened, Rosh Hashanah was upon us. None of us felt like celebrating the Jewish New Year, we were mired in tohu and vohu. We did it anyway. We lit our candles, we blessed our round challah and honey. I remember thinking this is what sometimes happens, tohu and vohu, tragedy occurs. Yet, our tradition teaches that with time, with time, we light the candles, we bless the wine and we find glimmers of light again. This idea is echoed in the teachings of the Hassidic Reb Kalonymus Shapira who encouraged Jewish people in the Warsaw ghetto to celebrate Jewish holidays, as a sign of the deepest belief in life while enduring the most horrific circumstances. Our tradition is one of audacious hope. Indeed, this light has already been present in Israel this week as families across the country rally to feed soldiers, communities pray and sing together, teenagers dig graves, volunteers educate children and mothers donate breastmilk. It was present at our community vigil at Rodney Reserve where we came together to pray, sing and be supported by each other and Australia’s political leaders. It is also present in the way every single teacher shows up with kindness to teach and be there for students.

We all carry grief in our hearts while giving our children routine, goals to look forward to and moments of joy. We are a people who choose life. As we hold our children and students through this time, I encourage us to seek the glimmers of light for ourselves too, to be hopeful amid the grief and to audaciously affirm life.

As we light Shabbat candles this week, let us remember this Jewish teaching, that light can co-exist alongside the pain. We will get through this together!  

Shabbat Shalom