Dear TBZ Community,
The day after Simchat Torah often feels like the true first day of the year. After twenty-three days of the holiday season (if you start counting from Rosh Hashanah!), today is the first day we return to something resembling normalcy, rhythm, and routine.
This year, that feeling is deepened by the return of the remaining living hostages who have come home, and by what we pray is the end of the war in Gaza. We continue to wait for the hostages still to be brought to burial. And we pray for Palestinian civilians as they return to their homes, that they may begin to recover, to mourn, and to rebuild their lives. This moment feels like a fragile opening, a chance to begin a long and difficult process. Many of us approach this moment with hesitation, unsure what will unfold, aware that we are not yet at peace. Real, lasting, transformative peace will demand far more than a ceasefire. It will require courage, moral imagination, and a shared commitment to restore dignity on both sides.
On Tuesday morning, during our Shemini Atzeret service, we prayed for geshem (rain) and for the winds to blow again. At the end of the service, we walked outside together and recited Matir Asurim, the prayer for the freeing of captives. As we cut the blue ribbons from the front columns of TBZ and removed the names of the hostages who had come home, we marked a moment of change, a deep breath between grief and hope.
That evening, on Simchat Torah, we danced again with the Torah, recommitting ourselves to live and move through the world inspired by its wisdom.
The words that come to mind for me are from Naomi Shemer’s song “Hachagiga Nigmeret” (The Party Is Over):
לקום מחר בבוקר עם שיר חדש בלב
לשיר אותו בכח, לשיר אותו בכאב
לשמוע חלילים ברוח החופשית
ולהתחיל מבראשית
To wake up tomorrow morning
With a new song in our hearts,
To sing it with strength,
To sing it with pain,
To hear the flutes in the free breeze,
And to start—from the beginning.
The refrain, ulehatchil mibereshit (to start from the beginning), repeats throughout the song.
To stand again, to wake up again for a new beginning, this is the essence of Simchat Torah and of this moment in the calendar. At TBZ, as we invited all the children to the last aliyah of the Torah, we blessed them with hopes for a year of new beginnings, a year of renewed vision for a better world, a year in which we work toward a brighter future for them.
That’s what we do. We start over – again and again. As the holiday season and the month of Tishrei end, we begin once more to read the Torah mi’bereshit (from the very beginning). Our tradition, in its infinite wisdom, invites us to return again and again to the beginning, with fresh eyes and open hearts.
In Bereshit (Genesis), creation begins with light and darkness, order and chaos intertwined. Soon we encounter the first human beings, and almost immediately, the first act of violence.
A midrash (commentary) from Yalkut Shimoni (a compilation of biblical interpretations) imagines a conversation between God and the Torah at the moment of human creation:
The Holy Blessed One said to the Torah, “Let us make the human.”
Torah replied, “This human will be short of days, full of conflict, and fall into the hands of sin.
And even if You are patient with them, it will be as if they had never come into the world.”
God said, “Is it for naught that I am called slow to anger and full of compassion?”
Then God gathered dust from the four corners of the earth – red, black, white, and green,
so that wherever a person walks, they may know: a part of them is from there, and there they will return.
What a vision of creation: a world that begins in compassion. Humanity born flawed, and yet belonging everywhere. And God’s compassion becomes trust in our imperfect humanity.
This midrash teaches that God creates human beings knowing our shortcomings, and chooses us anyway. Creation begins not with certainty, but with potential and compassion.
Today, at my monthly Brookline interfaith clergy meeting, one of our Bahá’í colleagues opened with a reading from The Promise of World Peace:
“The Great Peace towards which people of good will throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts,
of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision,
and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of humankind have constantly held the promise,
is now at long last within the reach of the nations…
World peace is not only possible but inevitable.”
That word, inevitable, stayed with me.
What would it mean to begin this new year, this new reading of Torah, with the radical belief that peace, kindness, joy, compassion, and human dignity are not just possible, but inevitable?
To live as if that were true, to act as if compassion must come first, like God, even when the path ahead feels uncertain and long!
May this new beginning guide us toward that inevitable good. Even if the road ahead is long and hard, may we not give up.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessing.
May we begin this new Torah cycle with hearts open to possibility.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May healing flow to all who are in pain, and may joy return to those who have waited so long.
May we, together, start again, mibereshit.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia