Our Sacred Mission: Finding the Light After October 7th

This week’s Dvar Torah was written by Rachel Peck, a retired editor and proud Zionist. She’s written “After October 7th, with our beginning again the yearly cycle of Torah readings, I kept seeing wisdom from our Torah that related to the current war and felt moved to write about this.”

Photo by Ian Nicole Reambonanza on Unsplash

In this week’s Torah portion, Va’etchanan, the Aseret Dibrot (literally “Ten Utterances”, more commonly known in English as the Ten Commandments) make a second appearance.

We first read them in Exodus when G-d gave them to the assembled children of Israel at Mount Sinai. Now that they were poised to enter the Land, Moses reiterated them.

But Moses, speaking to a new generation that included many who were not at Sinai, repeated some of the commandments slightly differently…

But the commandment that varied the most in Moses’ retelling was the one to honor the Sabbath.

In Exodus, it’s: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy…For in six days Hashem made heaven and earth and sea—and all that is in them—and then ceased on the seventh day; therefore, Hashem blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8,11).

This same commandment in Deuteronomy became “Guard (or observe) the Sabbath day and keep it holy…Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and your G-d Hashem freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore, your G-d Hashem has commanded you to make the seventh day.” (Deuteronomy 5:12, 15)

At Sinai, G-d’s role as Creator was stressed. But as the people prepared to enter the Land, they were reminded that G-d also intervened in history as their redeemer.

The idea of G-d as the creator of all the universe is easy to believe. It is difficult to experience the wondrous beauty and complexity of this world and think it just somehow randomly came about.

But it is much harder to believe in a G-d who not only intervenes directly in the world, but also cares about us.

From Rwanda to Darfur, from the Turkish Armenians to the Chinese Uyghurs, from slavery to civil wars to genocide, the evil and pain that can be found in the world are overwhelming.

And a G-d that considers Jews a segulah, a treasure? Look anywhere in our long history and you will find incidents beside which October 7th, horrible as it was, pales in comparison.

This week we observed Tisha b’Av, commemorating all the destructions, forced conversions, expulsions, and massacres in our history, culminating in the Shoah.

This year, we had yet another disaster to add to this pageant of pain and loss: Hamas’ attack on October 7th.

Just as in other times we composed elegies of lament, or kinot, recited every Tisha b’Av, so some have stepped forward with new lamentations.

Two survivors of the kibbutzim attacked that day, Nurit Hirschfeld-Skupinsky of Nahal Oz and Liora Ayalon of Kfar Aza, composed kinot, weaving verses from Eicha into their own words.

A haunting musical piece, “Lamentation Over Be’eri” by Yagel Harush beautifully captures the sorrow of that day, played out in Kibbutz Be’eri.

These three compositions speak to all the people and places devastated in Israel on October 7th…

Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon, himself a composer of a kinah about October 7th, tells us that sanctification of G-d can begin in the same way as desecration.

He reminds us of the sanctification we saw on October 7th, as soldiers, medics, and civilians, Jewish, Druze, and Muslim, saved lives and fought evil…

That other, long-ago day at the Jordan, Hashem did not withdraw from our affairs, but did give us more responsibility.

Manna and quails from heaven would be replaced with fields in which to sow and reap. No longer would water flow from rocks where and when we needed it; we would have to seek our own or dig wells.

Rather than temporary huts thrown together with the materials at hand, we would need to build homes for not only ourselves but our children and children’s children.

And where evil reared its head, we would have to fight it.

Hashem would still be active in the world, but we would be called to act as well.

The reiteration of the Ten Commandments told us plainly that after leaving the wilderness where all our needs had been provided for, we were to become partners in the ongoing story of humanity.

We ourselves must intervene in human affairs to lessen darkness and increase light in the world.

We must continue to be a light, to each other and to the nations. That is our sacred mission.

Shabbat Shalom