Shalom Chaverim,
There are not enough words…
There are no words at all.
And yet somewhere in between “not enough” and “none at all” we continue…
Searching
Crying
Wishing it wasn’t true.
Grieving
Raging
Loving one another and all of our siblings in the whole House of Israel.
Words have to begin, and maybe they quite rightly begin with the reading of Beresheit this week. Beresheit, literally, “at the start of it all” or “In the Beginning” or “At the Head of Creating”, begins the story of Creation with a word: “And God said…Vayehi Ohr – Let there be Light.”
Let there be light:
Of shiva candles for the dead
Of freedom for the captured
Of protection for our soldiers.
May there be Light for the many traumatized souls
and May there be Light to guide our leaders and generals and officers with discernment and wisdom and success,
and May there be Light to keep all of us from embracing our darker instincts of cruelty and vengeance and hate which would gnaw into our beings to transform us into what is so despicable and evil in our enemies…
Veyehi Ohr: May we be guided by the Light of the love which grieves in our hearts for so many innocent, beautiful souls –
נֵ֣ר יְ֭הֹוָה נִשְׁמַ֣ת אָדָ֑ם
Ner HaShem nishmat Adam
The candle of God is the soul of a human [Proverbs 20:27]
And May we be guided by all the Light that all those souls would have brought to the world themselves with so much caring and loving and learning, with so many kind deeds and such creativity and teaching and giving and all the so-much-light and good that a human can radiate out into the universe and do in an entire lifetime: May we make more such light with our own lives so that wickedness will not have extinguished their souls entirely, so they remain a lantern for generations.
Vayehi Ohr