A Love Letter to Torah: Shabbat Bereishit 5785

The other night as I left Hevreh after our Simchat Torah celebration, there was a single line from a song we sang that I just couldn’t get out of my head. 

Eitz hayim hi la’machazikim bah, v’tomcheha me’ushar. 

It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it, and all of its supporters are happy. 

That hebrew word, la’machazikim called out to me— the song we learn to sing from a very young age defines it as holding fast. The hebrew brings out the nuance of clinging— clinging to Torah, and on this year, with all of the layers of meaning behind each and every Jewish holiday, I couldn't help but picture it like a life preserver— a spiritual floatation device that the Jewish people have clung to amidst the rocky seas of living in a post 10/7 world.

I found myself really feeling the anniversary, all over again. I think often about what it means to live on two calendars. To have one foot planted firmly in the calendar that tells us that it’s October, and that this week is Halloween, and that the kids have a half-day from school, and it’s time to restart the family group text about Thanksgiving plans. 

But, when I think about why we are here, it’s to strengthen the muscles that help us to stand in the Jewish calendar as well. The calendar tells us that we have just celebrated Simchat Torah— and that once again, it was the 22nd of Tishrei, and that last year, on the 22nd of Tishrei, our joyful celebration of Torah was interrupted by terror, and by acts of war. 

The balance it takes to live with one foot in each of those calendars is remarkable, and like Tevye, I can’t help but feeling like a shaky fiddler on the roof. 

Last year, on this very Shabbat— Shabbat Bereshit, it was the very first Shabbat after 10/7. This sanctuary was packed to the gills; we didn’t know a lot, and we didn’t know what was in store, but we knew we had to be together. 

That night, I gave a sermon that I called Ein Milim— there are no words. Even as a rabbi, I can laugh at the irony of a 1800 word sermon all about how there are no words.

But that is how it felt, and how it continued to feel for a long time. 

And then, because we are human, and because both of the calendars we live in push us forward— the time pushed forward. We had no words, but then it was time to put kids in Halloween costumes and make plans for Thanksgiving. We had no words, but then it was time to light Chanukah candles. We had no words, and the calendar turned from 2023 to 2024.

And eventually, we had a few more words. 

We had words of fear and anger. 

We had words of hope, of perseverance. 

We had the words of Torah. 

We had the words of Bereshit, and then Noah, and then Toldot, Vayetze and Vayishlach to guide as we learned how to celebrate simchas during a time of war and sadness—- I look back on the B’nai Mitzvahs of Fall 2023 and I have only pride and gratitude for the way our students and their families held on to Torah. 

We had the words of Torah to guide us across the sea on Shabbat Shira, and we remembered the story of our people’s exodus from slavery and the beginning of their journey toward freedom. 

We had the words of Torah to hold us when we marked 100 days since October 7, 100 days of war, 100 days of ongoing captivity for the hostages— and we had Torah still when the landmarks and the counting kept going higher. 

We had the words of Torah to guide as the seasons changed and it was time to celebrate Pesach again— we took comfort in the words of Torah, remembering God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm. 

We had the words of Torah to mark occasions like Confirmation & Shavuot, we named new babies touching their hands to Torah, we welcomed new Jews to this covenanted people with these Torahs. We blessed brides and grooms in the presence of these Torahs. We prayed for peace, we prayed for the release of captives, we prayed for healing, in the presence of these Torahs. 

Week by week, month by month, holiday by holiday— time and again, our Torah offered us a way forward. 

What is clear to me now— having completed two full calendar cycles since that moment— having observed both the one year anniversary of 10/7 and of 22 Tishrei– is that the Torah was our life preserver. 

And so tonight, the words I have are a love letter to our Torah. 

A love letter to our own two scrolls— the two that sit in our ark. 

Because in this moment where it feels again like perhaps, I don’t have the words, I am reminded that Torah does. 

This Shabbat, we begin a new sacred cycle of Jewish time, having unfurled our scrolls and read breathlessly from the last verses of Deuteronomy to the very beginning of Bereshit. 

And in this moment, what Torah offers us, are the words to begin again. 

I have no doubt that we are in the midst of a moment of great transformation—- a new beginning, a new mark on the timeline that the Jewish people will look back on as a “before and after”, and here, Torah reminds us

Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz. V’ha’aretz hayta tohu va’vohu.

In a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was tohu va’vohu: unformed and void, or in other words— total chaos. 

Before there was anything- there was tohu va’vohu. Unformed. Void. Completely desolate. Rashi suggests that we understand tohu in this case as meaning amazement— which is to say were the human eye to see what earth looked like when it was tohu va’vohu, they would have been astonished and amazed.

Looking at the world around us, especially now— the metaphor feels apt. 

Our world feels tohu va’vohu: unformed, void, chaotic. 

We might relate to that feeling of being astonished by it all. 

But then, creation happens. 

And with each day, God creates a world teeming with life: varied, dynamic, beautiful, interconnected. From the seas to the skies high above mountains, God creates a world, and then creates us, human beings, to be its guarantor. 

We learn that when God creates humans, God creates them b’tzalmo— in God’s own divine image, endowing us with the capacity to discern, decide, and to do. Our own ability to act, and to create is envisioned as a force for good in the world. 

As readers of the text, we know that the road ahead for God and man will not be entirely smooth.  Even within the first chapters of Torah, we learn that God’s vision for human beings is thwarted by the story of the snake, and the Tree of Knowledge. 

But ultimately, God creates us, because God wants us to be in this world. 

Perhaps one answer for why humans live for such a brief time in the Garden of Eden is that there was too much life outside waiting for us to live— too much justice to pursue, and compassion to offer, and learning to take on, to stay forever in the pristine but cloistered garden. 

Torah could not just begin and end in the idyllic, uncomplicated world of Eden. 

I think about the visual metaphor that we create for ourselves on Simchat Torah— we unroll the Torah scroll around the perimeter of this sanctuary, and when we are done- we are truly surrounded by Torah. There’s often a small gap— of just a couple of feet, between where the person holding one of the eitzim stands, holding the Torah where it ends at Deuteronomy, and where the circle continues, with another person holding the eitzim, where the Torah begins at Genesis. 

We finish Deuteronomy with the words 

“...Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom יהוה singled out, face to face,for the various signs and portents that יהוה sent him to display in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his courtiers and his whole country,and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel”

If Torah simply ended there, it would feel like the story of the Jewish people did too— never again was there someone like Moses, and never again could we come close to God like that. 

But then, just as I did on Wednesday night— we move just a few feet to one side, and there, we begin again: 

Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz. V’haaretzt hayta tohu va’vohu. 

We get another new beginning. 

We get to start over. 

There is no question that we are living through a time of great rupture and change. We are living in our own moment of tohu va’vohu. 

But, we have the gift of knowing that we can learn from what comes next. 

Jewish time is a cycle, and the story of our people flows in and out of Torah, across time and space— and it’s all there for us to cling to. 

I learned a story recently about  R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira who was the rabbi of the Warsaw ghetto. In 1940, he wrote in a drash about this very Torah portion “A person who learns Torah but is not transformed thereby into Torah and holiness, is merely a bookshelf containing books—they remain merely a piece of wood, as they were before.”

We are called the People of the Book, not because we wish to remain static in time, resting on a bookshelf— but because we know that the book that undergirds our peoplehood is one that pushes the story of humanity forward. We cling to Torah not because we cling to the past, but because we know that it’s teachings can enliven our future. What we need, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said so eloquently, is “text people” rather than “text books”. 

When I reflect on this new beginning, of a new sacred cycle of Jewish time— I am hopeful. 

I have hope because I have seen how this community has clung to Torah, and brought it’s teachings to life in word and in deed. 

I am hopeful because as a community, we have made commitments to sustaining and protecting Torah both spiritually and physically. 

Those words, Eitz Chayim Hi, ring true. 

Torah has been for us a tree of life. 

The song we sang this past week during Simchat Torah contains only the first line of the text— but the text continues: 

דְּרָכֶיהָ דַרְכֵי נעַם וְכָל נְתִיבותֶיהָ שָׁלום:

: 

Its ways are pleasant,​ and all of its paths peaceful.​ 

May we continue to cling to Torah as a source of hope in these challenging times. May the words we speak and the work of our hands be for peace. 

הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה' אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה. חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם

Return us to you, God, so that we shall return, renew our days as of old.

May this new sacred cycle of Jewish time bring us closer to Torah, to one another, and to a world at peace.