This week as we anticipate both the joyous festival of Simchat Torah and the dreadful anniversary of October 7, I share my Yom Kippur reflections echoing Sam Salcman who reminds us Jewish joy after catastrophe is not forgetfulness. It is an act of resistance. The murderers tried not only to kill Jews but to extinguish Jewish confidence, continuity, and joy. The most authentic answer, then, is not survival alone, but renewal.
The traditional offerings of this festival acted as prayers and atonement for the welfare, peace, and rainfall of all humanity, not just the Jewish people. The biblical prophet Zechariah envisions a future time when people from all nations of the world will journey to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot together in universal harmony.
I wish my Jewish community a festival of renewal and my non-Jewish friends and allies a taste of our shared happiness.
Chag Sameach
__________________________________________________________________________________
Yizkor – A time of remembrance and renewal
You won’t pass an Australian driving test unless you know when and how to use your rear-view and side mirrors. There is both an art and a science to checking them – especially the rear-view mirror – and Google recommends that you:
Exaggerate head movement: Examiners sit beside you and need clear proof that your eyes are moving.
Tilt your chin slightly: A deliberate, slight tilt of your chin upward toward the rear-view or side mirrors ensures the examiner visibly registers your check.
And if you want to pass the Yid test – to show what a good Jew you are – you must rise to the moment of Yizkor. Tilt your head back and show that you belong to the people of remembrance. We are the quintessential people of memory: we carry it in our bones and remembrance in our blood. We remember when the world forgets.
It’s the most repeated word in the Torah…
Zachor
Zecher
We know better than most that to forget or deny our history is to erase part of our identity. The more we try to suppress memory, the more certain it is to return – sometimes erupting like a volcano, sometimes breaking open like a dark, ugly cyst.
Since October 7, there’s been some discussion in Israel and the Jewish world that there should be a new day of grieving added to our calendar. An Aveilut Chadasha. And, in fact, that’s the date the third anniversary will be marked across Jewish communities including Melbourne. And then some communities will do so on one of the happiest days of the Jewish calendar, namely Simchat Torah.
What about December 14? It will, rightly so, be commemorated on Bondi Beach and remembered across our Australian nation. It has etched itself so deeply now into our Australian Jewish identity. It’s hard now to think of or sing Waltzing Matilda without thinking of little Matilda Britvan. When shots rang out her mother, Valentina, sprinted towards the area where she thought her two girls might be, but could not find them. Michael, her husband, saw the younger Summer crouching with a grown-up near the frightened animals of the petting Zoo, and then he saw Matilda. She was running; he screamed her name Matilda Matilda and then she fell, and the horrifying footage shows Matilda trying to get up from where she lay on the other side of the plastic chairs. She peered up desperately trying to find her mum and dad. Michael crawled around to her, but when he got to her side he realised he was too late to keep his daughter safe. He spread himself over her trying to shield her, took off his shirt and pressed into her wound to try to stop the bleeding… Reading all of this, says Caroline Overington, you can’t help thinking she was 10, she was 10. She was 10…
There is indeed a time to cry, a place for memory, a space to park our hurting hearts.
But as King Solomon wisely cautioned – there is a time to cry, but there is also a time to laugh.
Too much grieving can weigh down the purest of human hearts, and even turn them to stone. That is why our Rabbis put a boundary on grieving, restricting it to one year even if you are still wounded and aching.
Yizkor reminds us that there is no life free of grief, but also that in the acknowledgement of grief, in the suffering and pain that it makes us endure, lies the healing and ultimately (and paradoxically) the affirmation.
American author Parker Palmer writes about the two ways in which we can see the heart as being broken: the first is imagining the heart as shattered and scattered, torn and tortured. The second is imagining the heart broken open so it can expand into a new capacity, broken open so that it can hold more of both our own and the world’s suffering and joy, despair, and hopes. (It echoes the evocative aphorism of Rabbi Nachman: There is nothing as whole as a broken heart).
It’s a paradoxical thought that beautifully encapsulates an essential idea of Judaism, of how we live in that liminal space, the window between despair and delight. Life is about the constant struggle between hope and distress, opportunity and loss. Navigating our way between the sheer joy of being alive and the challenging and sometimes depressing struggle of living a good life in a cruel and wounding world.
We are living through an awful time of traumatic stress in Israel and bewildering distress in Australia. The Royal commission has exposed so much of our dismay and disillusion in Australia. It’s a dangerous and difficult time, and part of the danger lies in our surrendering to grief and despair. To see no hope and future for Australian Jewry. To be filled with dread for the future of Israel. To believe there is no way to change the twisted timbers of humanity. Only to see the shattered heart, but not the heart enlarged.
That is the path of nihilism, not the Jewish way – not the road of hope that Jews have paved and travelled for centuries. It is the path proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah, whose words we read on Yom Kippur morning: “Loosen the bonds of evil and break the chains of slavery; set the oppressed free”. Thank God, there are no yellow ribbons this year. “Share your bread with the hungry, bring the homeless into your home, and do not avert your eyes. Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. You will call and the Lord will answer; you will cry out and He will say, here I am. The Lord will guide you, satisfy your thirst, and strengthen your bones…”
And at this juncture, in this fundamentally changed world, we cannot afford to be adding grieving to grieving, mourning to mourning. It’s time to stop looking only in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to start looking forward through the widest windscreen of our minds.
Our duty is not to dwell on new ways and days of mourning. Our responsibility is to replace, or at least reduce, Aveilut Chadasha with Tikvah Chadash. To discover and uncover a new morning for a new day, and not mourning for an old day.
You cannot change unless you believe in change. And we Jews have always believed in the possibility of change otherwise we would not be here today on this fundamental day of change of repair and reparation. We are passionate about Tikun Olam, a New World, a Brave New World. Come my friends – it’s not too late to seek a better world!
This is not the optimism born out of blindness, but the hope born out of boldness.
Elie Wiesel reminded us of the words of the Bratislava Rabbi which were posted onto every shtiebel, or prayer house, in the Warsaw ghetto – Jews do not despair!
Yes, this is a wounded world; but like Wiesel and Victor Frankl, you may not be able to change the world, but you can start by changing yourself, by changing your attitude… because, ultimately, it’s not aptitude but attitude that gives you altitude!
My work with Australians of many faiths gives me hope for our country’s future – from meeting the new Anglican Archbishop and lighting Christmas candles in the Catholic cathedral, to standing with the Vietnamese community after Bondi. I also draw encouragement from Tal Becker, whose political and diplomatic service to Israel has led him to envisage an emerging Judeo-Muslim civilisation and renewed ties between moderate Jews and Muslims. He cites the Abraham Accords as evidence that such change is possible. Every faith has hateful zealots, but most believers seek moderation and dialogue. We must confront extremists – including Palestinian and Islamic extremists in Australia – while making passionate moderation our defining principle. As Yeats warned, when “the best lack all conviction” and “the worst are full of passionate intensity”.
I also draw comfort and strength from the next generation. The Jewish people are undergoing a generational and paradigmatic shift amid epochal, AI-driven global change, and young people are leading our community forward.
I’ve moved from cautious optimism to hopeful pessimism, but I am still a believer. I believe in the enduring spirit of our ancient Jewish people, in the remarkable resilience and strength of the Australian Jewish community, its activists, and its courageous, talented young people, in the good heart of this ancient continent, and in the power of relationships, friendships, and allies here in Australia and abroad! I take joy in walking this road with its twists and turns, promising opportunity bringing him into contact with people of many faiths, and the many of no faith who seek meaning, security, and hope.
The High Holy Days ( and again at the end of Sukkot when we have a Yizkor service )teach us that memory must lead to action. We honour the dead not by remaining trapped in the anguish of their absence, but by building the future they hoped for.
Simchat Torah must again be a day of dancing, although its joy will always carry an undertone of mourning. As Sam Salcman reminds us – Jewish joy after catastrophe is not forgetfulness. It is an act of resistance. The murderers tried not only to kill Jews, but to extinguish Jewish confidence, continuity and joy. The most authentic answer, then, is not survival alone, but renewal.
October 7 revealed the worst – the divisions within Israel, and between Israel and the Diaspora – but it also brought out the best, inspiring, extraordinary solidarity across the Jewish world. Israelis opened their homes to displaced families, while volunteers supported soldiers and communities. Diaspora Jews raised funds, travelled to Israel, and spoke passionately in its defence. The crisis also deepened Israelis’ awareness of the Diaspora and its importance.
In one of his final speeches, Steve Jobs observed that we can connect the dots only by looking back, not forward. We must, therefore, trust that they will somehow connect in the future – whether through instinct, destiny, life, karma, or something else. He said this faith had never failed him and had made all the difference in his life.
And philosopher Kierkegaard reminds us that if you live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.
In this new year I’m adjusting my rear-view mirror, but I am also looking ahead, ensuring my windscreen is clean and clear!
Let’s join and make the difference to our wounded world.
Chag Sameach!
