Deuteronomy 14:22-16:17
Numbers 29:35-30:1
I Kings 8:54-66
Simchat Torah:
Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12
Genesis 1:1-2:3
Numbers 29:35-30:1
Joshua 1:1-18
by Rabbi Amy Eilberg
A friend of mine says that, in a sense, we die and are reborn several times in the midst of this lifetime. My friend learned this in a particularly dramatic way. During a period of two years, she married, adopted two children who had lost their parents, and then watched her husband suddenly die. After these events, she realized that anything that happened before this watershed point seemed like a different lifetime.
For many of us, the same teaching may present itself in a much gentler way. In fact, we are given this opportunity — to gently die and embrace rebirth in our lives — each year, as we finish reading the Torah, and begin again with Bereisheet (Genesis) on Simchat Torah.
I had such a life-changing experience since I wrote my last column. A few days before Rosh Hashanah, during what began as a routine doctor’s appointment, I learned that I had several tumors growing inside me. The doctor, trying to be reassuring, told me that he didn’t think I had ovarian cancer, but we clearly had to consider that possibility. What followed was a week of doctors’ visits, diagnostic tests and living with terror. Rosh Hashanah was not much comfort; I was living the words of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer (“On Rosh Hashanah it is written…who shall live and who shall die…”). Ten days after the initial news, I was fasting, preparing for surgery, facing the possibility that a serious cancer was growing in my body. It was my own personal Yom Kippur.
As cancer stories go, mine was extraordinarily brief, merciful and lucky. I awoke in the recovery room; one look at my husband’s face, beaming at me, and I knew the news was good. For utterly mysterious reasons, I had been spared.
I had often watched people live in the world of cancer. I had heard people describe the journey, but now it had been my turn. I had the sensation of living in a different dimension — everyone else was doing their normal, everyday things, and I was facing the prospect of life-threatening illness. Trivialities and normal expectations fell away. I only had energy for what was essential and absolutely true.
I was in the grips of fear the likes of which I had never known. And I noticed that the love and support of my family, friends and community were extremely powerful. I found myself unabashedly asking people to pray for me; I felt strongly that having people hold me in prayer would help. I experienced God’s Presence keenly in the person of a renowned surgeon who turned out to be an extraordinary healer. With her, I felt the Divine Presence with me.
Then, with awesome good fortune, the crisis was over. The tumors were benign, the surgery had gone far better than I could have dreamed, and my healing was unfolding at a very rapid pace. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and relief; awe-struck at what had happened to me. I began to pray the traditional words — especially, the Asher Yatsar prayer, thanking God for the wondrous workings of the body. But really the words to which I could give my full attention were simply, “Baruch Ata HaShem,” “Blessed are You, O God.”
I am just beginning to wonder: What will be birthed in me from this descent into the land of life-threatening illness? What kind of healing will emerge from this experience? What kind of new creation will present itself?
Whatever our experiences have been in the past year, all of us have the opportunity once again to contemplate endings and beginnings, as we begin the cycle of Torah readings anew this Simchat Torah. The text of Bereisheet is the same as last year and the year before, but we are different, for we have taken more steps in our journey since last we read this story. Life has revealed another piece of its teaching to us, and so we may be able to understand the story of Creation in a new way.
We may all ask ourselves, “What has died in our lives in the year just passed?” “What is waiting to be reborn, transformed, created anew?”
May the coming year bring us only gentle teachings. And may our encounter with Bereisheet this year bring us glimmers of new creations that we may embrace in the year to come.