Remembrance and Renewal: Entering a New Year with Grief
Hayom Harat Olam. Today, the world was born.
We, as a Jewish people, spend a lot of time marking important dates and holding on to them throughout time. We remember the day we received Torah at Mt. Sinai, and we make it the sacred festival day of Shavuot. We remember the day we left Egypt, and celebrate it as the festival of Pesach, telling the story to our children as though it happened to us. We celebrate new beginnings with songs, feasts, and stories, gathering family, friends, and guests to share our joy as widely as we can. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the day the universe began. We say Hayom Harat Olam. Today, the world was born.
We also mark endings with solemnity. We remember the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and mourn each Tisha B’Av, observing practices that position us as mourners. When someone in our family dies, we hold on to that day and say Kaddish on the anniversary for the rest of our lives. As Jon Polin, father of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin z”l, said so poignantly, “In our Jewish tradition, we say: Kol adam olam umlo’o; every person is an entire universe. We must save all these universes.” As we celebrate the day the universe began, we also feel pain and loss in the depth of our souls for the many, many universes that have ended over the last year.
On the secular New Year, many people set resolutions, articulating goals and promises for the year to come. Rosh Hashanah, on the other hand, calls on us to look back and reckon with our own actions and intentions in the year that is concluding. We reflect on just what kind of person we have been. We are not asked to predict or envision, let alone to control, where the year ahead will go. Instead, we are challenged to surrender to the inevitability of whatever the future holds. What is done is done. What will be will be.
As I do this seasonal work of looking back on the last year, I find it hard to make it all the way to last year’s Rosh Hashanah. I get stuck on October 7. And the journey back to last October in my heart and soul is thick and murky. It is full of tears shed and fears come to reality. As I look back, I see college students at their best and at their worst: living out their values and casting them aside, building strong relationships and having friendships fall apart. I see myself and my fellow Hillel professionals feeling like we are in over our heads and holding our heads high. I see rabbis and Jewish community leaders guiding their communities through uncharted waters and calling on the richness of our tradition and experience to show them the way.
On this Rosh Hashanah 5785, we celebrate the birthday of the world, and we acknowledge that we are living in a changed world. We experience the rituals with different spirits. We hear the words of the liturgy (the prayers we say) and the lectionary (the Torah and prophetic readings) with changed ears. When we read about Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, we think of the senseless killings of parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, and of people sending their loved ones off to war. When we pray “who shall live and who shall die?” we feel it too acutely. When we hear shevarim, the shofar’s broken cry, we sob along with it, and when we hear tekiah gedolah, the longest blast of the shofar, its plaintive cry reminds us that we have within ourselves the strength, resilience, determination, and, yes the simple breath, that will carry us further and longer than we would have ever thought possible.
Jessica Lott is the Campus Rabbi at Northwestern Hillel. She has worked in the Hillel world since 2008, both on campus and at Hillel International, specializing in Jewish education, student engagement, student wellbeing, professional development and curriculum development.
Remembrance and Renewal is a series of reflections around the High Holidays and the first commemoration of October 7 from Hillel rabbis across North America.