News

Remembrance and Renewal: Entering a New Year with Grief

Author

Rabbi Jessica Lott

Date

October 1, 2024

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鈥橝v, 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鈥漧, said so poignantly, 鈥淚n our Jewish tradition, we say: Kol adam olam umlo鈥檕; every person is an entire universe. We must save all these universes.鈥� 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鈥檚 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 鈥渨ho shall live and who shall die?鈥� we feel it too acutely. When we hear shevarim, the shofar鈥檚 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 黑料传送门, 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.

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News

Finding Empathy in the Passover Story

Author

Rabbi Jessica Lott

Date

March 30, 2023

Passover is the holiday when we all become storytellers.

At my seder table growing up, we took turns passing the storytelling baton around our large table filled with multiple generations of family and guests. We each read aloud from the Haggadah, doing our part to tell the greatest story of the Jewish tradition. It was a collaborative effort and, together, we inhabited the tale of our transition from being an enslaved people in Egypt to being a free people traveling toward the Promised Land.

More frequently than anything else in the Torah, we are commanded to remember that we were slaves in Egypt and we were led out to freedom. On Passover, we are commanded not only to hear this story, but to tell it as our own. 鈥淚n every generation,鈥� the text of the Haggadah says, 鈥渆ach of us is obligated to see ourselves as if we, personally, went out from Egypt.鈥� This is based on the passage in the Torah that says 鈥淵ou shall explain to your child on that day, 鈥業t is because of what God did for me when I went free from Egypt.鈥欌�� (Exodus 13:8)

The act of storytelling is more than just a fun exercise. Though I鈥檓 not sure the authors of the haggadah knew about neuroscience,  they did, in their wisdom,  build a tradition that leverages what researchers now know is true: storytelling affects our brains. It shapes who we are and how we behave in the world. Paul Zak, Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, writes about how our brains love stories.  鈥淎s social creatures who regularly affiliate with strangers, stories are an effective way to transmit important information and values from one individual or community to the next. Stories that are personal and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain, and thus are better remembered, than simply stating a set of facts.鈥�

His research shows that when we tell a story, listen to a story, or watch a story unfold before our eyes, we begin to feel the characters鈥� emotions as our own. We understand them. By retelling the Passover story, we begin to understand Moses and Pharaoh. We understand the Hebrew slaves and the heroic midwives. We understand the Egyptians suffering under the plagues. We get it all.  And, Professor Zak suggests, 鈥淪tories can motivate us, like the characters in them, to look inside ourselves and make changes to become better people.鈥�

Stories are the building blocks of empathy. So for those who may have the blessings and privilege of a rich and bountiful life today, the Passover story is a reminder that there is much suffering in the world and we are responsible for its repair. And for those who are themselves suffering, the Passover story of redemption offers some hope.

Whatever our circumstances, the Passover story pushes us to identify with the powerful and the powerless. The story, OUR story, pushes us to see that we are a people of perseverance, a people of miracles, and a people of purpose. And if we can see ourselves in the ancient Hebrews living in ancient Egypt, then surely we can see ourselves in the people we meet on our campuses and in our communities.

This Passover, may we be blessed to be immersed in the story in order to be changed by it.

Rabbi Jessica Lott is the Campus Rabbi at Northwestern Hillel. She has worked in the Hillel movement for over a decade, both on campus and at 黑料传送门. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two kids and she loves bike riding, baking, and doing crossword puzzles.

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