The celebration of the Jewish holidays has always been rooted in the duality of joy and sorrow, hope and suffering. Throughout Jewish history, these moments of festivity and reflection have been interwoven with periods of persecution, displacement, and unspeakable atrocities. This tension between the obligation to celebrate and the awareness of human suffering is at the heart of what it means to live with faith in a broken world.
As we commemorated the one-year memorial of October 7, 5785 this past week at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, our thoughts continue to be with the hostages and their families, and our Israeli family and friends who are deprived of the joy of celebration. Our grief casts a pall over our festivals which can feel hollow or even unjustifiable. How do we gather in happiness when others are enduring unimaginable pain? There is no simple answer, but it lies in the nature of Jewish tradition itself.
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