This poem, by Rabbi Evan Schultz is possibly all too relatable. It speaks to how fragile we have become in recent times. Everyone around us is so similarly shaken, that we imagine even God is weeping with us. And for good reason. This year, for Jews all over the world, everything has changed.
Rabbi Josh Weinberg, the Executive Director of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America, recently shared the following words in one ARZA’s weekly emails:
Many of us will always remember where we were on October 7th.
For Rabbi Weinberg, this date will live on in infamy, like the other dates he’s unable to forget, such as the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the attack on the World Trade Center on (9/11).
I wonder which dates are sealed in your memory in this way. I imagine for many of you, it would be the release of Mandela or the ending of Apartheid.
“It is not cliché,” Rabbi Weinberg wrote, “to claim that the massacre on October 7 (changed) the world so considerably that we now view life in a binary time frame of pre- and post- …
The brutality and magnitude of the carnage and destruction proved to be unlike anything we had seen in the past and hopefully like nothing we will ever see again.”
Similar sentiments were shared with me in another email, this one inviting me to a support group for Rabbis struggling with the post-Oct. 7th “tsunami of grief”
This email stated: “We are holding so much sadness. We grieve for lives lost. We grieve for the friends and (acquaintances) that have turned their backs on us, for the sense of safety and security that is now gone, for hopes and dreams for Jewish life that now seem impossible. . . “
This year has knocked us down, collectively. Rabbi’s are struggling. Jews in the Diaspora are struggling. University students are struggling. Parents are struggling. Our youth are struggling.
Israelis, it goes without saying, are struggling.
Rabbi Weinberg describes how, “in one fell swoop, Israelis (and Jews all over the world) were brought back to that sense of vulnerability that many had filed away in our collective memory from over a century ago when we lived under the rule of the Czar
and were the perpetual victims of anti-Jewish persecution and torment.”
October 7th took us back to those eras where Jews were vulnerable; Where we had no choice but to hide or flee, convert or die. For much of our lives we may have felt that Jews were much more secure in this age, than in the past. But now, we are not so sure.
Are we destined to never be safe in this world?
The Psalmist asks (13:3): Ad ana . . . yagon bil’vavi yomam?
How long will there be grief in my heart all day?
Another email, this one from Rabbi Beth Naditch, describes the jarring discrepancies we’ve felt throughout the Jewish cycle of time this past year:
“This is the way the chagim are supposed to work,” she wrote. “During Elul, we spend a month engaged in cheshbon ha-nefesh, a serious self-examination in which we review our previous year and prepare for the one ahead. . . (But) this year, we need no dedicated month of cheshbon ha-nefesh, as we have been taking stock constantly for hours, then days, then months, then somehow, a whole year. This year, we need(ed) no wakeup call from the shofar.
Any complacency (we) might have slid into … never even had a chance to settle in 5784, as the entire rhythm of our Jewish lives was upended before we even had an opportunity to put away the white Torah covers of the Yamim Noraim. . .”
“The pages of this year,” she wrote, “are stained and mottled with the tears of the past year, where in many ways, we are still frozen in place, waiting for the day after Simchat Torah to begin.”
And yet somehow, we have come around to this time of year again.
“Despite everything,” writes Rabbi Naditch, “time seems to have passed. In each season (we) found (ourselves) surprised.
Latkes and sufganiyot felt wrong – how could it be Hanukah when it was still October?
How could we have arrived at Purim, and how could we celebrate in the traditional way, when our hostages still languished in captivity. . . ? How have we somehow lived through an entire year?”
“The past year has taught (us),” she concludes, “that whether or not it feels right or natural, time does keep moving. We keep existing and shockingly, growing, even as our souls may shout out or try valiantly not to shut down. . .”
The Psalmist writes: Gar’sa nafshi l’ta’ava
My soul is crushed with longing. (Psalm 119:20)
Rabbi Naditch, as it turns out, specializes in trauma-informed care in the face of communal disaster.
If she were here, Rabbi Naditch might explain to us (in case we weren’t already aware) that what we have experienced this year, is trauma, and on multiple levels at that.
Psychologytoday.com defines “trauma” as what occurs, “when we experience very stressful, frightening or distressing events that are difficult to cope with or out of our control. It can be one incident, or an ongoing event (extending) over a long period of time.”
Most of us will experience trauma in our lifetime, but not all of us will be affected in the same way.
Trauma can affect us immediately after our experience, or it can affect us a long time later. “There’s no rule (about what can be considered) traumatic. . What’s traumatic is personal.”
Trauma can come from experiences that cause us to feel frightened, threatened, humiliated, rejected, abandoned, invalidated, trapped, ashamed, or powerless. It can occur from something we experience directly, or by witnessing someone else being harmed, which is called secondary or vicarious trauma. There is childhood trauma, and there is collective trauma,
which is when a traumatic event happens to a large number of people at the same time.
We have certainly been experiencing the collective trauma
of October 7th, and the secondary trauma of witnessing the documented horrors and hearing the survivor testimonies.
Yehuda Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman institute, speaks about the secondary trauma that is also evoked by “malicious actors in the world who intentionally manipulate or cast doubt on historical events,” such as Holocaust deniers.
For Jewish people after the Holocaust, “they not only had to survive the trauma of the Shoah, but had to fight for it to be remembered (correctly), with all of the indignity that that connotes.” More recently,” he notes, “efforts to call into question
the Hamas atrocities of October 7th (have) created the same effect.”
These traumas are compounded by another type of trauma that is often described by Jews – generational trauma, which is a trauma that is experienced across a family or a group that shares a historical identity.
And on top of our collective, secondary, and generational traumas, many of us are also experiencing moral injury, which is what occurs when you’re put in a situation that goes against your morals, values or beliefs – for example, feeling torn between the values of Israel’s right to defend itself, and the resulting, devastating loss of Palestine civilian life.
In other words, we are going through a lot right now.
The Psalmist wrote: Ain omer, v’ein d’varim (19:4)
There is no utterance, there are no words.
In Yehuda Kurtzer’s writings and podcasts, he has often spoken about the feeling of ethical loneliness, the “experience of being both victimized, and then not believed.”
“Unfortunately”, Kurtzer notes, “Jews are not always the victims of this kind of malicious questioning of the memories of others.” Sometimes we are the perpetrators.
“I do not understand,” he recently said, “and I am ashamed by when some Jews insist that the Palestinian experience of Nakba – not the story of what happened in 1948 from an objective historical sense – but the Palestinian experience of Nakba, their trauma, (in) their formative memories are somehow false or a lie. You can absolutely be a Zionist (and grant Palestinians) the legitimacy of their trauma and their essential memories.”
In other words, we must take care to ensure that we do not use our trauma to justify the trauma of others.
Most of us have heard of PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
which is when a person experiences the symptoms of trauma so severely that they are unable to cope with day to day life.
There is absolutely no shame in experiencing the effects of trauma. If you are struggling and have not found support, please reach out to me so that I can assist you in finding someone to work with. PTSD can be managed and overcome.
Although it’s more than reasonable to be focused on the negative effects of trauma right now, there is also something called Post-Traumatic Growth, which is when there is a positive psychological change that is experienced after a life crisis or traumatic event.
Post-traumatic growth is built on the idea that adversity can,
unintentionally, yield positive changes in our self-understanding, and our understanding of others and the world around us.
With post-traumatic growth, we open ourselves up to transformation, as a way of not only coping with, but adapting to our trauma, especially when what we’ve experienced has challenged our personal or world-views.
For example, someone who has been assaulted or mugged may feel that their overall sense of safety or bodily integrity has been challenged. While they can regain a sense of security over time, Post-Traumatic Growth would encourage them to consider whether there might be positive results stemming from the lack of certainty around personal safety. Maybe this person ends up enrolling in a self-defense class, resulting in a boost of overall confidence in their ability to protect themselves and even others.
In this approach, the damage of the trauma is not erased, rather it is redirected into positive changes in how we live, or think about ourselves and our world, and even the visible or invisible scars
left behind by our trauma.
In Rabbi Naditsch’s Elul email, she wrote about being in Sequoia National Park (in California). I shared a snippet of this last night, in my sermon on hope. Here, it relates to our scars and our healing.
She describes seeing trees that had survived fire, and how, if you were to examine their cross sections, you would see areas in the tree rings that still held the scars of fire and drought – “dramatic and visible evidence of distress”. And yet, she writes, “the trees continued to grow around the scars and heal.”
In Post-Traumatic Growth, trauma survivors explore how their experience has changed their mindset, for example, if they appreciate life in a new way, if their relationships have deepened,
or if they have found a new sense of spirituality. Seeing our trauma scars as a beautiful reminder of resilience, is another example of Post-Traumatic Growth.
Rabbi Jordan Brauning of the Jewish Studio Project, shared (in yet another email), a teaching from Pirkei Avot, where we are instructed that a person should be meod, meod shefal ruach,
of a very lowly spirit.
Rabbi Brauning wrote about how he has struggled to assimilate this teaching into his life. Recently, however, he is able to appreciate it in new ways. “What if,” he asks, “we lower ourselves, not as a punishment or an act of self-effacement, but instead, in order to gain a new perspective on the world?”
The Psalmist wrote: Todi’eni orach chayyim
Make known to me the path of life. (Psalm 16:11)
If we want to explore the benefits of Post-Traumatic Growth, there are six suggestions for us to focus on.
Awareness of personal strength:
What has my experience taught me about what I’m good at?
Awareness of new possibilities:
What values do I want to prioritize in light of my experience?
Relating to others:
How does my experience help me to have more compassion for others, be more altruistic, or how might it encourage me to let go of relationships that no longer serve me, and lean into relationships of giving and receiving mutual support?
Appreciation of life:
How has my experience caused me to have a new
or renewed sense of the blessings in my life?
Spiritual Change or Development:
What meaning can I find in my experience?
Has my experience caused me to feel closer to the Divine and if so, how might I incorporate that new sense of spirituality into my life going forward?
Creativity:
How can I channel my experience into art, music, writing or other creative pursuits that might benefit others?
Consider these words, from an email from the Jewish Studio Project, who have reinvigorated my own post-traumatic growth
through the sharing of writing prompts throughout Elul:
“We believe that each and every one of us is endowed with innate creative capacity. When we are connected to our creativity, we can transform our lives and the world around us. . . “
In Rabbi Weinberg’s ARZA email, he described how Israeli culture, “has been overflowing with art, song, and poetry. “Jews around the world,” he wrote, “are striving to comprehend the trauma in which we find ourselves in this new era of Jewish history. . . As we approach the first anniversary of the dreadful day that has been seared into our memory…we find ourselves finishing one part of mourning and transitioning into the next … (where) we will be looking to learn, reflect, analyze, and digest
the lessons that we take from such a monumental event. . . “
Rabbi Brauning brings another teaching, in yet another email: This one, attributed to Elimelech of Lizhensk, who, “when considering his life and his actions, wondered how he would fare on Rosh Hashanah… In the end, he concluded, ‘my broken heart will stand me in good stead.’
This teaching is a balm,” Rabbi Brauning writes.“Our broken hearts testify to the fact that we are alive, that we are not numb,
that, despite it all, we seek another year of life and blessing, of peace and wholeness.”
On this Yom Kippur, this Day of Awe, may we accept our trauma and may we grow from it. That something good might come from all this terror. That we and our world might find our way from brokenness to betterment.
Kein Yehi Ratzon
