By Betzy Lynch in La Jolla, California
At our October 7 commemoration this week, Nili Margalit shared something I have held onto all week.
Nili, a pediatric nurse, survived 55 days as a hostage in the tunnels beneath Gaza. Even in captivity, she cared for her friends and neighbors, tending to their needs while facing unimaginable fear herself.
She spoke about the strength it takes to live after tragedy.
We often imagine resilience as climbing out of a deep hole. We summon our strength, find our footing, and make our way toward the light. But Nili described something different. We climb, and then a memory comes. A photograph. An unexpected wave of grief. Suddenly, we are falling again.
And somehow, we must find the strength to climb once more.
Her words made me think about the different ways Jews have learned resilience across generations and oceans.
Our great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents who survived the Shoah rebuilt families and communities while carrying memories that could pull them back into darkness without warning. Israeli Jews have continued to develop this resilience through generations of wars, terrorism, and loss.
For many of us in North America, however, resilience has been something we inherited through stories rather than something we have had to practice in quite the same way. We knew our history, but perhaps we did not fully understand the strength it demanded.
October 7 has challenged that distance between knowing and understanding.
And perhaps the Torah has been teaching us how to bridge it all along.
Three years ago, on Simchat Torah, our dancing stopped. A holiday celebrating the completion and renewal of Torah became a day of devastating loss, forever changing the Jewish world.
I have wondered about the spiritual significance of October 7 occurring on Simchat Torah. Not because I believe G-d intended this tragedy, but because our calendar now brings these moments together, asking us to hold grief and renewal in the same sacred space.
On Simchat Torah, we finish Deuteronomy with the death of Moses and immediately turn the scroll back to its beginning.
Bereshit bara Elohim. In the beginning, G-d created.
We know this story. Yet we return to it every year, not to discover how it ends, but to discover what it reveals to us now.
The Torah has not changed. But we have.
The same words speak differently through eyes shaped by another year of living. What once seemed distant becomes personal. A passage we barely noticed suddenly offers wisdom we desperately need.
The great Hasidic master Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, in his Me’or Einayim, teaches that Torah is the divine light through which creation came into being, a light that remains concealed within existence.
Perhaps each time we return to Torah, we discover something of that hidden light, not only within its sacred words but within ourselves and the world around us.
Nili’s story has changed how I understand resilience. Beginning again is not the same as starting over. It is finding the courage to live fully, knowing that grief may return without warning.
And perhaps that is what this third anniversary asks of us, particularly those of us in North America. Not simply to remember October 7, but to consider how remembering is changing us. What do we understand about Jewish peoplehood that we did not understand before? What responsibilities have become clearer?
We cannot return to October 6, 2023. Nor should we aspire to become the people we were before.
Some days we recognize the light in acts of compassion, courage, and hope. Other days, darkness makes it nearly impossible to see. But the light of creation has not been extinguished. It is there for us to discover in the lives we touch, the communities we build, and the ways we care for one another.
And when we fall, we climb again, carrying our memories, our grief, and the wisdom of a tradition that has been teaching us how to begin again all along.
If you missed Nili’s extraordinary story, she will be speaking again today at the JCC at 4 PM.
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Betzy Lynch is the CEO of the Lawrence Family JCC.