Rabbi Sam Trief
Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste, Director of the Israel Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR, asks a piercing question: “When does a story begin?”
Her answer is unsettling yet true.
A story begins the moment something collapses and breaks. We might think a story begins with setting the scene—a place, a time, a gentle introduction. But in truth, a story begins when something shatters, when reality cracks open and can no longer hold itself together. That’s when the defenses fall and a new story must be told.
We see this powerfully in Deuteronomy, the final book of our Torah.
At first glance, we might expect the story to continue: more desert wanderings, new enemies, fresh miracles. But Deuteronomy is not about the next adventure. Moses knows his life is nearing its end. His death, painful as it will be, will become the beginning of a new story for Israel, a story without him, yet one that carries his teachings forward.
This week, I’ve been feeling that same kind of breaking. These past two years have forced me to reunderstand and reimagine my Judaism…what it means to be a Jew in 2025. And with the horrific loss of proud and cherished leaders of the Jewish community: Wesley LePatner & Julia Hyman, and those working to protect others: Didarul Islam, and Aland Etienne in the New York shooting this week, it feels as if the blows just won’t stop.
For me, this tragedy is one of many instances that has shattered a reality I have been naively holding on to. The reality that certain spaces, certain moments, certain lives would always be protected and safe. That illusion is gone. And yet, in the way that Torah teaches us, when something breaks, the story does not end; it begins again.
As we open this new book of Torah, the final book of Torah, we also feel the turning of our own seasons. The school year is about to begin. The countdown to the High Holy Days has already started. Life is asking us to move forward, even when our hearts feel heavy.
And so, we ask ourselves:
What is it that is shattering in us right now? What old truths or assumptions are cracking apart? And how might this very breaking, painful as it is, become the start of the next chapter of our story, the story we are called to write together. May we find the courage to begin again.
May we find the courage to begin again. To write new stories of hope, resilience, and renewal out of the fragments of what has been broken.
Shabbat Shalom
