Lights in the darkness
On Oct. 7, 2023, I was at the Central Massachusetts Torah Center to celebrate Simchat Torah. As October and the third anniversary of Oct. 7 approach, I cannot help but reflect on that day. We were mandated to celebrate the zman simchateinu even as the early reports from Israel were trickling in.
That evening, the Torah Center’s Rabbi Moshe Liberow spoke powerfully about the need to do two things at once. We had to mourn our fellow Jews and other victims in Israel, he said, while at the same time celebrating the holiday. That way, he said, we would be resisting those perpetuating the horrors that we were only just learning about by reaffirming the spirit of the Jewish people — including those we lost.
I hope this issue of Jewish Rhode Island, and all issues, will do that. I hope that it can take note of the darkness of the times, while also reaffirming the light that shines through.
That light is reaffirmed in smaller, but perhaps more powerful ways. We have a couple of articles, for example, about crafts fairs, one at Temple Torat Yisrael and the other at Temple Beth-El. These and other articles highlight the work of people who, because they love their synagogue, Judaism and the Jewish people, have spent weeks or months dedicating painstaking effort to create programs out of love for the community.
Seemingly mundane, these everyday acts are powerful resistance to the darkness we saw so forcefully on Oct. 7, 2023. They are proof of the Hasidic maxim: “A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness.”
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