Reflections

Reflections for living, grieving, celebrating, and becoming

— with Rabbi Jerid

Welcome.

This space is a place for reflection—on living and grieving, on celebration and change, on becoming who we are over time.

Some reflections here will draw from Jewish tradition: Torah portions, holidays, and cultural wisdom. Others will arise from pastoral moments, chaplaincy work, or the quiet questions that surface when life slows us down. All of them are offered not as answers, but as companions—words to walk with rather than conclusions to arrive at.

This is not a space for belief statements or certainty. It is a space for meaning-making, honesty, and presence. Wherever you come from—religiously, culturally, or personally—you are welcome here.

New reflections will appear over time, sometimes in writing, sometimes in video. This one will remain here as an open doorway. The newest reflections will unfold just below this welcome—moments along the path.

I am glad you are here.
Rabbi Jerid

We Begin Again, But Not From Nothing

Shabbat Reflection | October 10, 2026 | 29 Tishrei 5787
Parashat B’reishit | בְּרֵאשִׁית — “In the Beginning”
Genesis 1:1–6:8

There is something almost audacious about the Jewish calendar.

We have just moved through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, through Sukkot and Simchat Torah. We have remembered, repented, celebrated, danced, mourned, eaten, fasted, built temporary shelters, and rolled the Torah all the way to its end.

And then, almost immediately, Judaism looks at us and says:

Begin again.

בְּרֵאשִׁית — B’reishit.

In the beginning.

Not because what came before did not matter. Not because we have forgotten it. And certainly not because we are the same people we were the last time we read these words.

We begin again precisely because we remember.

That feels especially important to me this week.

Only a few days ago, we marked October 7 once again—a date now carrying layers of grief, trauma, fear, anger, and memory. Three years have passed, and yet time does not move neatly when we are grieving. Some wounds change. Some deepen. Some begin to heal and then ache again unexpectedly.

And into a week of memory, Torah says: B’reishit.

Begin.

I do not hear that as an invitation to forget.

I hear it as an invitation to ask what we will do with what we remember.

The Torah opens:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים — B’reishit bara Elohim.

“In the beginning, God created…”

For some, these words describe divine creation. For me, they are part of our ancestors’ great mythic and poetic attempt to make meaning of existence—to ask how order might emerge from chaos, how light might emerge from darkness, and what human beings are supposed to do once we find ourselves here.

And I love that the Torah does not give us a perfect world.

Almost immediately, something goes wrong.

The garden does not remain a garden. Human beings make choices. Relationships fracture. Cain becomes jealous of Abel. Violence enters the story.

And then comes one of Torah’s earliest and most enduring questions:

הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹכִי — Hashomer achi anochi?

Am I my brother’s keeper?

Cain asks it as an evasion.

Humanity has been answering it ever since.

For me, Humanistic Judaism offers a clear response:

Yes.

Yes, we are responsible for one another.

Not because a supernatural power will punish us if we fail. Not because heaven will necessarily intervene when human beings harm one another. But because if human beings do not care for human beings, who will?

That responsibility does not stop at the boundary of people who look like us, pray like us, vote like us, speak like us, or understand the world as we do.

Jewish memory asks us to care deeply about Jewish life and Jewish suffering. It should.

But Jewish ethics must also strengthen our capacity to recognize the humanity of others.

Those two commitments need not compete.

We can grieve our own and still see another’s grief.

We can defend our own and still insist upon another’s dignity.

We can remember what has been done to us without becoming indifferent to what is done to someone else.

Perhaps that, too, is part of B’reishit.

Beginning again does not require returning to innocence.

It requires returning to responsibility.

The rabbis imagined something remarkable about creation. In B’reishit Rabbah, Rabbi Abbahu suggests that before this world existed, God created other worlds and destroyed them. They were not yet right. So creation continued.

Whether we understand that story theologically or metaphorically, I find something wonderfully Humanistic within it:

Even creation required revision.

The first attempt did not have to be the final attempt.

What a freeing idea.

We are allowed to reconsider.

We are allowed to repair.

We are allowed to discover that something we once believed no longer works and try again.

We are allowed to say, “I was wrong.”

We are allowed to become wiser than an earlier version of ourselves.

Maybe our lives are less like circles than spirals. We return to the same places—the same holidays, the same Torah portions, sometimes even the same struggles—but we do not return as precisely the same people.

This year I hear B’reishit differently than I did last year.

Next year, I hope I will hear it differently again.

Our Christian neighbors also begin their scriptures with this story of creation. Muslim tradition, too, repeatedly turns toward creation as a source of reflection about humanity and our place within the world. Our theological conclusions may differ, but across traditions there remains a remarkably persistent question:

Now that we are here, what kind of human beings will we choose to be?

That may be the question beneath all the others.

This Shabbat also stands at another small threshold. We are nearing Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan. The extraordinary intensity of Tishrei is giving way to quieter, more ordinary days.

And perhaps that is exactly where all our lofty reflection must eventually go.

Into Tuesday morning.

Into the conversation we would rather avoid.

Into the apology we still need to make.

Into the person who needs our attention.

Into the choices nobody applauds.

Into the ordinary work of building the world we say we want.

Torah begins with a world emerging from tohu va-vohu—formlessness and chaos.

Our lives sometimes feel that way too.

So does our world.

But perhaps B’reishit is not asking us to create everything.

Perhaps it is simply asking us to create something.

A little more light.

A little more kindness.

A little more justice.

A little more room for another human being.

We begin again, but we never begin from nothing.

We begin carrying memory.

We begin carrying experience.

We begin carrying one another.

And then, as human beings have always done, we try once more to make something good from what is before us.

May this Shabbat give us the courage to begin again without forgetting.

May memory deepen our compassion rather than harden our hearts.

And may we answer Cain’s ancient question—not only with our words, but with the lives we choose to live:

Yes.

Yes.

And yes.

We are one another’s keepers.

Shabbat Shalom

With you through life’s moments,
Rabbi Jerid

We Remember

October 7, 2026

We remember those who were murdered, those who were wounded, those who were taken from their homes, and those whose lives were changed forever. We remember families who still carry an empty chair, communities whose sense of safety was shattered, and a Jewish people for whom this date now carries a weight it did not carry before.

And we recognize, too, the terrible suffering that has followed—the grief of Israelis and Palestinians, the lives lost, the families displaced, and the wounds that continue to deepen across the region.

Jewish tradition offers a beautiful phrase to mourners: HaMakom yenachem etchem—“May HaMakom comfort you.” HaMakom literally means “The Place,” an ancient rabbinic name for God. For some, that language speaks of a divine presence that surrounds us in grief. For others, HaMakom can name something more human and immediate: the place we make for one another when sorrow is too heavy to carry alone.

Comfort does not always arrive as an answer. Sometimes comfort is simply a place—a place where grief may be spoken, where tears need no explanation, where memory is allowed to remain.

And perhaps we can become such a place for one another.

The Psalmist writes, “Karov Adonai l’nishberei lev”—“The Eternal is near to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:19). Some may hear those words as a promise about God. Others may hear in them a call to human responsibility: when hearts are broken, we draw near. We sit beside one another. We listen. We remember. We refuse to let suffering become invisible.

That, too, is a deeply Jewish response.

Our tradition teaches that memory is not passive. To remember is also to ask what we will do with what we remember. We honor the dead not only with words, but with the lives we choose to build—with compassion, with courage, with justice, and with the stubborn insistence that every human life has worth.

For anyone carrying this day heavily, may you be gentle with yourself. May those who find comfort in God find it. May those who find comfort in community, memory, love, or simple human presence find it there. And may all of us help create a world in which grief is met with tenderness rather than indifference.

Zichronam livracha. May the memories of those we have lost be for a blessing.

And may we become part of that blessing through the way we live.

With you in life's moments,

Rabbi Jerid

Previous reflections can be found here.