A Message from Rabbi Weitzman: Remembering October 7

Dear Congregation Beth Emeth,

Three years ago this morning, the music was still playing at Re'im. Young people had danced through the night, and the sun was just rising over the desert. Within an hour, that dance floor became a place of terror.

The psalmist teaches, "You have turned my mourning into dancing" (Psalm 30:12). Notice the order. Mourning comes first, and the dancing grows out of it, never in place of it. Today we stand in that space between the two.

It is no accident that this wound landed on Simchat Torah, the one day of the year our tradition commands us to dance. Just days ago, on the Hebrew calendar, we reached that anniversary, and once again we carried our Torah scrolls around the sanctuary. We did so with heavier feet, but we did dance. That, too, is a kind of answer. This Shabbat we read Bereshit and begin the Torah again. Our tradition refuses to let an ending stand alone. Every conclusion carries a beginning within it. But beginning again does not mean forgetting, and today is a day to remember. 

We remember nearly 1,200 lives taken, more than 360 of them at the Nova festival. We remember the hostages taken that day and the families who waited, and still wait, for wholeness. We remember the soldiers who fell defending their people, many of them barely out of school.

Each loss is both personal and universal. A few months after October 7, I stood with members of our community at the site of the Nova festival. I remember the bullet holes, the sounds, and the smells. And I remember a Spider-Man basketball hoop outside the home of the Bibas family in Kibbutz Nir Oz, a family whose children's lives were taken far too soon. My own son had that same hoop. He played with it for hours. At that moment, the distance between their home and mine disappeared. And I remember that behind every number stands a name, a family, a world.

The effects of that day rippled far beyond it. Israelis responded with remarkable courage. Antisemitism surged around the world and here at home. Even within our own community, the past years have tested us. And the war brought suffering to innocent people on all sides. To grieve honestly is to hold all of this at once. 

Tonight let us choose to stand together. Congregation Beth Emeth joins the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York, the Albany JCC, and congregations and organizations across our region for a community-wide October 7 Memorial at 7:00 PM at the Sidney Albert Albany JCC, 340 Whitehall Road. We will remember the victims and the hostages, and the soldiers who gave their lives defending Israel. Grief carried alone is crushing. Grief carried together becomes something we can bear. I hope to see you there.

May the memory of those we lost on October 7 be for a blessing. May those who survived continue to heal. May we find the strength to turn our mourning into dancing. And may peace come soon, for Israel, for the Palestinian people, and for all who long for it.

Rabbi Weitzman