That Pain You’re Feeling Is Peoplehood | SAPIR Journal

Jewish tradition had always asserted that the hope of faith and the joy of living with God does not blot out the reality of tragedy in life. Until a final redemption occurs, the awareness of defeat and destruction must be incorporated into faith, thereby becoming a learning experience. The days of mourning would demonstrate that Jewish affirmations

We are acknowledging that we are all in the same business of coping with suffering and finding out what it means to be fully human.

Judaism is the principled rejection of tragedy in the name of hope – precisely because there is no inexorable fate. Nor does hope stand alone. It belongs to a world in which not only God but also human beings, his image, are free, masters of their fate, responsible for their destiny.

The Jewish people remains a family, often divided, always argumentative, but bound in a common bond of fate nonetheless. As our parasha reminds us, that person who has fallen is our brother or sister, and ours must be the hand that helps them rise again.

we Jews are always on the way, always in process. There is no place to live in stasis, no way to be complete while we’re alive. Galut is now a universal condition for everyone.

Perhaps that is why the Torah refers to our totality—body, memory, identity—as nefesh (“soul”). You don’t have nefesh; you are one.

“There isn’t a serious Jew today, whatever denomination or affiliation, who is not still somehow traumatized that a third of our people were destroyed so viciously and in such a short period of time. It’s like the amputee who still feels the phantom pain. The leg isn’t there, but the pain is always there.”

The liberated person is the one who learns to accept the daily challenges of existence as the expression of self-fulfillment and responsibility. Sukkot