Click here to listen to an audio recording of this Message by Rabbi Dan Levin
It’s been three years. And it’s hard to admit. But we’re still in deep grief.
Grief grabs us differently in different moments – incredulous disbelief, or overwhelming sadness; blood-boiling anger, or a tingling fear; deep-seated yearning, or soul-crushing despair.
So on this gut-wrenching anniversary, this tragic yahrtzeit, what are we to do?
First, we give ourselves room to sit with our anguish and our heartbreak. It’s still almost impossible to wrap our minds around the evil visited upon our people that gruesome day.
How can the mind grasp the grotesque inhumanity of those who gloried in massacre, who relished bloodshed, who tortured with glee, who slaughtered children in front of their parents, and murdered parents in front of their children? How to comprehend the cold-blooded, premeditated carnage they proudly recorded? How they burned entire families alive?
Our eyes well with tears as we weep for each individual precious life stolen – sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, lifelong friends. Our hearts break for the thousands who still bear the scars of that day – many whose injuries lie beneath the skin, in the depths of wounded souls.
We burn with outrage when stories of rape are discounted and ignored, when unspeakable acts of inhumanity are somehow justified as “resistance.” We seethe at the smug self-righteousness and condemnation of those who lack any meaningful understanding or awareness of the complex history of this awful conflict.
We bristle at the sanctimonious conceit and moral posturing of those who scream simple slogans they don’t understand, who pronounce judgments from a place of arrogant ignorance, who foment intolerance and excuse antisemitism and anti-Jewish bigotry, allowing hate to fester and spread.
It is so easy to sink into despair. And yet, despair we will not.
Instead, we hope.
Hope insists that there is a better way, that it’s possible to create a different tomorrow.
Hope creates the space for us to imagine the world as it ought to be. Hope fuels our desire to work to make that future real.
Hope is the expression of our deepest yearnings, that pining and longing for the world as it ought to be.
So, for what are we hoping? For what are we longing?
We long for a time when the “Big Lie” of antisemitism will finally be put to rest, when the world will stop pinning on our tiny little people all of their resentment and blame for what they detest.
We long for a time when good people will rise up against the fundamentalist religious fanatics who, with warped souls and pediatric ideologies, dare to wreak violence, spread hatred, and shed blood in God’s name.
We long for a time when the persecuted and oppressed will be free to live their lives in safety and with dignity, with the opportunity to grow and build the world of their dreams.
We long for a time when love will overwhelm hatred, when understanding will overwhelm ignorance, when humility will overwhelm arrogance, and when decency will overwhelm depravity.
We long for a time when we can dance without fear, when we can laugh without lament, when we can look into the eyes of the other and see there the reflection of the living God in whose image we are all created.
We long for a time when healing will bring consolation to our broken hearts and shattered souls, and we can simply live our lives in peace.
There has been too much bloodshed, too much hatred, too much pain. It’s enough.
On this day when our hearts are heavy, let us be the ones who will shine the light of hope into our darkened world. Let us be the ones who will paint the picture of what our world is supposed to be. Let us be the builders of that better future.
It is time.
Rabbi Dan Levin
Temple Beth El of Boca Raton
