A New Bereshit? Parashat Bereshit. Kol Shalom, 2025

We begin a new cycle.

We finish reading the Torah and begin again, as if for the very first 

Time.

Each year, the same text, the same words…

and yet, something changes.

It isn’t the Torah that changes — it’s us.

Because we have lived, we have felt, we have learned, we have 

Suffered.

And that is why, when we return to Bereshit, we are no longer the 

same as we were a year ago.

Bereshit — “In the beginning” — is not only a phrase about the 

Past.

It is an invitation to the present.

Every beginning is a Bereshit, an act of creation.

And like every act of creation, it is surrounded by doubts, by 

emptiness, by chaos.

The Torah says it powerfully:

“The earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the 

face of the deep.”

That is how the story of the world begins —

not with harmony, but with disorder.

And yet, we immediately read:

“And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

What a powerful image.

Even in the midst of chaos, there is Divine presence.

The spirit does not withdraw before confusion or darkness.

It remains. It moves upon the waters. It waits with us.

And then, suddenly, “God says: Let there be light.”

This week, as we read those words again, I cannot help but think 

about the events that have taken place.

After two long years of waiting… after so much pain… we have at 

last begun to hear news that brings a measure of relief:

the return of the living hostages,

the announcement of a ceasefire, a possible end to the bloodshed,

and at last, a faint, but real sense of hope.

And I ask myself — as perhaps many of you do —

is this, too, a Bereshit?

Are we witnessing the beginning of a new cycle in the Middle East?

A different one?

One in which life begins to triumph over death,

where dialogue becomes possible again,

where the peoples of the region may start to imagine a shared 

Future?

We don’t know.

No one knows.

Like every act of creation, this beginning is fragile, uncertain,

Incomplete.

Darkness still hovers over the waters.

There is still pain, fear, and mistrust.

There are still murdered hostages awaiting to receive “Kever 

Israel”, a Jewish burial.

There are still civil Palestinians being killed, executed by the 

Monsters.

But if Bereshit teaches us anything,

it is that beginnings are never clean or perfect.

Light does not appear after everything is in order —

Light is what brings order to the chaos.

Just days ago, we celebrated Sukkot,

the festival that teaches us how to dwell with fragility.

In our sukkot, open to the sky, we are reminded that absolute 

security does not exist. A sense of being protected and safe comes 

from having faith, from presence and from community.

On Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot, we read Kohelet — Ecclesiastes,

which reminds us:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose 

under heaven.”

Kohelet does not deny reality.

He recognizes that there are difficult times,

that joy and sorrow are interwoven within the same fabric.

But he also teaches that nothing is eternal —

neither anguish nor war.

If there is a time to destroy, there will also be a time to build.

If there was a time to weep, there will come a time for comfort and 

Healing.

I pray that today, we are at last entering this time of comfort and 

healing. 

Not with naïveté, but with faith.

Not with certainties, but with hope.

\Because hope is not the denial of pain —

it is the choice not to let pain have the final word.

Today is a moment to celebrate —

to give thanks that some have come home,

that twenty families have been reunited after so much suffering.

And yes, it is also a time to continue praying

that the families of those hostages who were murdered will recover 

their loved ones’ remains so that they can have the closure that 

comes with a Jewish burial.

The book of Bereshit invites us to believe that the world can be 

created anew,

even when it seems shattered.

That the word — the good, just, and committed word —

can still bring light into the darkness.

May we, in this new cycle, become bearers of that word and of that 

light.

May we give thanks for every life restored,

for every ceasefire,

for every gesture of humanity.

And may we never lose the conviction

that a true, lasting, and secure peace — for Israel, for her

neighbors, and for all peoples of the region —

is not a utopia, but a real possibility,

one worth working and praying for.

Our Torah teaches us that God did not give up in the face of chaos.

And neither should we.

“Vayar Elohim et ha’or ki tov” — “And God saw that the light was 

good.”

May we learn to guard that Light that shines eternal.

May this be a blessed beginning.

Shabbat Shalom!