Transforming Pain to Build Peace – A Rosh Hashanah Reflection

As this year’s Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) is approaching, I can’t help but think how intertwined October 7th is with the Jewish high holidays, both in the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars. In the Jewish Calendar, October 7th was on Simchat Torah (a holiday celebrating the Torah). In the Gregorian calendar, it will fall this year between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during the aseret y’mei t’shuva – the 10 days of returning – an especially holy time for observant Jews. 

Back in August, on Tisha B’av (the saddest day in the Jewish calendar), I had the privilege of attending a workshop by Nitsan Joy Gordon, an Israeli peace activist and dance/movement therapist. Her organization Together Beyond Words strives to train and empower peace-builders and transform the prejudices between Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs and Jews.

She shared about the work she and others have been doing for over 20 years with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Bedouins, and Druze in the Holy Land. She told us that all this work is done together – working towards peace. 

Then October 7th happened, and the group realized that what people needed most was support to move through their trauma. In order to do the peace building work, they must first become aware of the pain they are carrying and then transform it. Giving people tools that enable a life where emotional wounds no longer control their behaviors and are not passed on from generation to generation but rather transform them here and now and create a promise of a future that we have not yet seen. This is done with witnessing each other’s grief, holding one another in movement, silence, and dialogue. You can see an article she recently wrote here.

We sat together in a circle for three hours as she guided us through this workshop. There were moments of movement, touch, silence, and sharing. I cried, I witnessed, I healed a little. I felt so grounded after I left, so in my body, so totally blown away by the courage it takes to do this work day in and day out. 

I am humbled by the resilience we need to lean into our own pain, the vulnerability to lean into someone else’s agony, especially if the someone else is part of the reason we are in pain, and the strength to create a new path, one forged in community where we may not agree on every single thing, but our desire for a just world is what guides us.

As we approach the anniversary of October 7th and a new Jewish year looms, I am finding that I do not have a lot of words, but rather feelings, aspirations, and hope. 

May this year be the year where we step into a future that we can only imagine. Where all are free, where all live in peace and harmony, where all have food and shelter, where all have autonomy and agency, where equality and equity guide our way of being, and where all feel taken care of physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Amen.

Shana tova u’metuka.
May we all have a sweet new year.