Dear Friends,
A week and a half after October 7, as part of a delegation of 25 Chabad Rabbis (including Rabbi Eli Schlanger OBM), I visited Kibbutz Shefayim, just outside Tel Aviv, which had become a temporary home for survivors from Kfar Aza.
I will never forget the scene.
In a large outdoor area were circles of chairs everywhere. From a distance, it almost looked like a picnic—families and groups sitting together in the Israeli sunshine.
But as I got closer, I realized what I was looking at.
They were sitting shiva.
Circle after circle. Family after family. People mourning parents, children, siblings and friends murdered just days earlier.
I approached one man who had just begun sitting shiva for his mother. I wasn't sure what one could possibly say. So I said to him in Hebrew, essentially, “We came just to be with you—to sit with you where you are.”
His response has remained with me ever since:
“I don't need you to be with me in the dark place where I am. I need you to lift me up. Lift us up.”
Three years after October 7, those words feel more relevant than ever.
This week's Torah portion, Bereishis, describes the sun and moon initially as “the two great luminaries.” Yet shortly afterward, one becomes the “great luminary” and the other the “small luminary.”
It brings to mind a childhood story about the Rebbe Rashab (Sholom Dov Ber) and his older brother, Reb Zalman Aharon. Although Reb Zalman Aharon was older, his younger brother was taller. So he dug a hole and had his brother stand inside it, making himself appear taller.
Their father, the Rebbe Maharash, told him: “That's not how you become taller. If you want to be taller, stand on a chair. You don't make yourself higher by lowering someone else.”
There is a profound lesson here for this moment.
The explosion of antisemitism since October 7 demands that we expose it, confront it and defend ourselves against it. But there is also a danger that we become so consumed with documenting the darkness that the darkness itself begins to define our Jewish identity.
Our response cannot only be to expose their darkness.
It must be to increase our light.
Perhaps the rise in antisemitism is also a call for us to become more luminescent Jews—more visible and unapologetic in our Jewishness, more passionate about Torah and mitzvos, and more determined to bring Jewish values of holiness, goodness, morality and compassion into the world.
The Torah's first model of gadol—greatness—is the “great luminary.” True greatness means becoming a maor, a source of light. If we possess light, our responsibility is to radiate it—to illuminate others until they, too, can shine.
The Torah calls upon the Jewish people to be “a light unto the nations.” That mission is not suspended when the world becomes darker.
Perhaps that is precisely when it becomes most urgent.
Three years after October 7, we certainly need to remain vigilant about antisemitism. But let us become at least as passionate about pro-Semitism—about what we love, what we believe, what we contribute, and the light Judaism asks us to bring into the world.
And perhaps there could be no more appropriate time for that message than Shabbos Bereishis — the Shabbos when we begin the Torah again from its very first word: Bereishis, “In the beginning.”
After everything we have experienced these past three years, the Torah invites us not only to remember, but to begin again. A new cycle. A new opportunity. Not to allow October 7 to define us by what was done to us, but by what it awakened within us.
And significantly, the very first chapter of that new beginning speaks about creating light.
Perhaps that is our Bereishis three years later: to begin again—and to shine brighter.
That man at Shefayim taught me something I have never forgotten.
Sometimes love means sitting with someone in their darkness.
But sometimes the greater gift is to bring them light.
Don't come down into my darkness.
Bring me some of your light.
Lift me up.
Three years after October 7, perhaps that is our calling as well:
Don't merely expose the darkness.
Become more luminous.
Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ruvi New
Please see the video recap of my post Oct 7 trip to Israel here.
