This שבת/Shabbat, we’ll be observing the second of three שבתות/Shabbatot/Shabbats that are part of the three weeks of mourning for the Jewish People. Each summer, we grieve and mourn as a collective. Certainly, each of us has a different take on what we’re mourning. Certainly, it’s clear that grief is an immensely personal endeavor, but we’re also intimately aware of the need and power of communal grieving. It’s been less than two years since we were thrown into this continuing cycle of the stages of grief with the terror and savagery unleashed on our people on October 7, 2023. To add to our grief, we were met not with open arms, love and support, but with condemnations, antisemitism and violence around the world and here at home. We witnessed too many people celebrating the “freedom fighters” who terrorized, maimed, raped, mutilated, kidnapped and murdered people simply because they were Jews or associated with Jews.
Every time we feel we can move forward in our grief, something comes along and pulls us backward. Two employees of the Israeli Embassy were murdered at a Jewish Museum in Washington DC. The Jewish governor of Pennsylvania had his house vandalized on Passover. People in Colorado who were running to raise awareness for the plight of the hostages were attacked with crude Molotov cocktails. These are not the totality of what has happened. We’re all too familiar with the plight of our college students. We’ve seen too many demonstrations across the US and the world against us and our homeland, and it’s been awful. Just this week on the Isle of Rhodes, a place many of our members trace their roots to, Israeli youth were harassed and chased at knifepoint by people who claimed to be supporters of the Palestinians. Please click here to read the Times of Israel article about the attack. This was on the heels of a cruise ship from Israel that wasn’t allowed to dock in Greece because of protests against Israel. There’s so much to grieve, to throw our hands up about, and to wonder why this is how things are.
The rabbis of the Talmud and other texts made clear that while the outside enemy, the Romans and before them the Babylonians, were responsible for the destruction, but that we, the Jewish People, needed to see ourselves not as blameless but as having work to do. The rabbis blamed us for having been weak, too enmeshed in infighting, too committed to a black and white worldview, and so much more. The blessing they gave us was to allow us to grow and change because of the destruction. They enabled us to see that we too have agency and need to be aware of how we use our agency.
We must mourn the terror victims and all our people who’ve had their worlds upended. We must grieve the loss of life and innocence, and the pain we’re in. We must not give an inch to the perpetrators or pardon anything they’ve done to our people. At the same time, we must be willing to mourn the cost of being Jewish and having a Jewish State. We must mourn that our people are the ones in charge who are making hard choices that have awful consequences for others. (This is not to say the actions aren’t necessary, but that the outcomes of those actions have an effect, and we should feel a sense of bewilderment and grief because the outcome for others is so awful). We must mourn that sometimes we hear words from people on our side, and from our leaders, that don’t sit well with us.
We all know words aren’t empty and meaningless. In this week’s פרשה/portion: מטות – מסעי/Matot Masei, there’s a great deal of information about oaths and the need not to take them, and when they are taken, the need to follow through on them. Why is this so important? Because words have meaning and value and cannot just be rattled off. The Talmud goes to great lengths to discourage people from taking oaths, because in the end words have meaning and it’s dangerous to allow words to just be thrown around.
We mourn all these things. We mourn a world that just won’t let us be who we are. We mourn a world that doesn’t want to allow us the basic rights all other people have. We mourn our people who have been lost or have had their lives irreparably damaged. We mourn the number of people who died defending our country. We mourn the hurt and destruction that’s been necessitated in our defense of our homeland. We mourn the words used by some of our leaders in defending our people. We mourn that with independence, comes a great deal of hard choices. We mourn that the world simply doesn’t look the way we wish it did. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Hearshen
Weekly Services
Click here to visit our Weekly Services page for service and candlelighting times in the Spiritual Life section on our website.
Next Saturday Night & Sunday
A Special Thank You to Sisterhood
Please join us in thanking the OVS Sisterhood for their generous donation to clean and beautify the entrance to our building, including refinishing the front doors inside and outside. We couldn't have done it without them.
Yizkor Book
The deadline to include the names of your loved ones in the Yizkor Book is Friday, August 1.
