After tragedy, how do we begin again? When what we know is shattered before our eyes, when that which we imagined would always be is suddenly lost, can we even begin again?
This week, we will mark the anniversary of the massacre at the Tree of Life/ Or L’Simcha/ Dor Hadash synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. We mark the 1st yartzeit of the 11 members of those congregations who were murdered when a gunman opened fire on a Shabbat morning, during services. On that morning, we were shaken, we were raw, we were scared, we were angry. We called our friends and family, held our loved ones tight. We saw ourselves and our congregation, in the faces of the victims and their families. Our hearts were torn open, and our sense of safety and security was pulled out from under our feet.
Over this past year, our scabs from that morning were torn open again and again as we bore witness to racially and religiously motivated hate crimes and attacks in El Paso, Christchurch, Halle, Poway... and we gathered with Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors formally at rallies and vigils, and informally around dinner tables and water coolers to grieve and to process.
At the beginning of Parshat B’reisheet (Gen. 1:2-3), we read in the story of Creation:
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃ וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר׃ וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָא֖וֹר כִּי־ט֑וֹב וַיַּבְדֵּ֣ל אֱלֹהִ֔ים בֵּ֥ין הָא֖וֹר וּבֵ֥ין הַחֹֽשֶׁךְ׃
…the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.
There is already something there when God begins to create our world. Tohu va’vohu, chaos, raw material – swirling depths over which a divine wind blows. Perhaps these first verses of the Torah provide a metaphor for how we can move forward and re-create our world after experiencing loss and trauma.
First, naming.
Our text does not gloss over the chaotic swirl of nothingness, it acknowledges it and gives it a name. By giving voice to our experience of trauma, we are better able to avoid the isolation to which it so often gives rise, and allow ourselves to separate from it.
This allows us to be in a place where we can hover over.
When God prepares to create, s/he/they do not jump right into the chaotic tohu va’vohu, but rather hover over it, perhaps to survey and process it in all of its depths. When we give ourselves permission to take the time we need to process, it can be easier to find the words that allow us to re-create our lives, rhythms, routines and relationships out of the depths of the tohu va-vohu. So, when we are ready, how can we do this? For this, we can also look to our parsha for guidance.
Before all of the plants, animals, trees, lakes, grasses, and people that will fill the Earth, our of the darkness of the swirling chaos, God calls forth light.
In this first creative act, as light is separated from the darkness, the chaos somehow becomes less chaotic. In this new light of… well, eventually day, the swirling tohu va’vohu is tamed, transformed into mere darkness. This does not, however, mean that it is no longer there. The primordial chaos of trauma is still there – and will always in some form be there – but it is tempered, and at every subsequent stage of our continual unfolding and renewing re-creation, transformed further and further.
And so, on this yartzeit of Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger as we light our first yartzeit candles, may we find the spark of Divinity in ourselves that gives both permission and the template for engaging in our human process of re-creation.
And, as we hover above the depths of this moment – and every moment – of trauma, may we be granted the ability to find the right words to call out and summon the light.