Perhaps, like me, you shed tears this week.
My first tears came as I watched video of the living Israeli hostages reunited with their families. I wept along with Einav Zangauker, one of the most outspoken advocates for the hostages, as she repeatedly cried out, “Chaim sheli!” “My life!” while embracing her son Matan. I cried as the father of Yosef-Chaim Ohana finished saying his prayers and emerged to tearfully embrace him. I sobbed at the cries of the parents of Eitan Mor as they were reunited with their son, and then again as I witnessed Eitan’s mother, Efrat, illuminate the deepest meanings of the shehechiyanu blessing.
The tears came again while reciting Hallel on Shemini Atzeret. Every line seemed to take on new significance. While I have recited these verses lines all my life, they revealed a new, visceral dimension on this day against this backdrop. Hodu ladonai ki tov, ki l’olam hasdo: Give thanks to YHVH for this goodness, God’s abundant love endures forever. Tears again.
And then we danced on Simchat Torah. If Heschel described marching for civil rights as praying with his feet, then this was the same theme in a different register. I had such an urge to dance, because just sitting or standing and praying or singing simply wasn’t enough. My body needed to move in order to express what I was feeling. When the circle moved slowly, I scooted to the center and found other people to dance faster. My eyes again filled with tears—of relief, of gratitude.
What added poignancy to everything, of course, was the fact that all this was happening precisely two years after we cried while dancing—a different dance and different tears. On Rosh Hashanah each of the last two years, I have choked up while reciting the prayer to the Holy One to “turn all our troubles and afflictions into joy and gladness, to life and peace.” And now there were tears that, after so much suffering and loss, so much war and death, at least for this moment, at least on some significant level, that prayer had indeed come true.
My last tears came the morning of Simchat Torah. Even though I know it’s coming, reading the death of Moses always pulls me up short. I get a lump in my throat. We have spent the last four books of the Torah with Moshe Rabbeinu, and every year I experience a pang of loss as we recite the final lines of the Torah. A tear comes.
And then, right away, we begin again with Bereshit.
The Midrash teaches that the word Yisrael is an acronym for Yesh Shishim Ribo Otoiot Latorah: “There are 600,000 letters in the Torah.” Bereshit, the first word of the Torah, is a related acronym: B’shishim Ribo Otiot Sheyisrael Yikablu Torah: “Israel will accept the Torah with 600,000 letters.” From these teachings, the Hasidic masters expounded the idea that every member of the Jewish people has a letter in the Torah. “Each Jew is connected to one letter in the Torah,” writes Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl in his Meor Einayim. “Each letter represents the divine element in each person. It is actually the very letter from which their soul derives. It is this letter that pours forth divine blessings and holy vital force.”
In my experience, we often explore this teaching with an emphasis on its personal nature: There’s a unique place for each one of us, and our avodah, our sacred service, is to find and inhabit it. I think that’s true. But at the same time, I might suggest that we’re only getting half the teaching through that understanding. Because here’s what the Meor Einayim says next: “A Torah scroll that is missing one letter is unfit for use. Indeed, it is not even considered a Torah, since each and every letter is considered a Torah, connecting with the others to make a complete unity… All Creation is a complete unity, like the Torah, which can only be called a Torah when all of its letters are present and united.”
The second part of the teaching here, I might suggest, is that our personal self-actualization is only part of the story. Yes, we need to find and be at home in our letter. But our letter is only truly our letter when it’s beside all the other letters in the Torah. We need every letter in order to make a Torah scroll. And we need every member of our community to constitute the Jewish people.
To put it another way: Torah and Jewish life are not things we can do on our own. We need the other 599,999 letters in order for our letter to mean something. So while we each have our special, unique individual journeys, those journeys are individual paths on an extraordinary highway that extends through space and time—back to the creation of the world and forward to its eventual redemption.
That brings me back to one more moment of tears. It came during the sixth of the seventh hakafot (dance sets) on Simchat Torah night. For the past two years, our synagogue has used the sixth hakafah as a moment to slow down the dancing a bit—in fact to stop. We form a large circle and sing slow songs, and we focus on the profound sense of connection and community that binds us and our entire people, not only in the synagogue, but across the world.
This year, as that singing took place, my 12-year old son Toby was on the bimah with a circle of kids spontaneously leading the hundreds of us in shul in singing a slow version of Am Yisrael Chai. Toby has come to love Simchat Torah, and he has come to love our special community in Skokie. Watching him up there with his friends, enacting the very words he was singing, I felt this incredible mixture of joy and pride, sadness and relief. As I welled up again, I spotted the parent of another of the kids on the bimah, and she had the same look on her face.
Over the coming months, I’m sure we will be unpacking a processing what the last two years have wrought for Jews and for Judaism. There’s a lot to work through. But one thing I hope we might be able to do is tap into the extraordinary spiritual power of our people. I hope we might be able to make space for every letter our collective Torah scroll. Indeed I believe we must do that. Because just as Torah lives, the Jewish people lives—in our uniqueness and our connectedness.
Before I sign off, I want to try out a new feature in these weekly messages: an invitation for you to reflect for a moment. Here are a couple of questions that can help you do so. You might consider them as journaling prompts or even as questions you can pose at your Shabbat table:
- As you think back on this fall holiday season, or even on these last two years, are there moments that stand out to you as particularly significant? Why?
- How do you relate to the teaching that every member of the Jewish people has a spiritual root in a letter of the Torah scroll? In particular, how does the idea of the Jewish people make you feel these days?
