Judaism is a religion of looking both forward and backward. Three times daily, at the end of the Aleinu prayer, we quote the prophet Zechariah who forecasts the day, at some point in the (hopefully near) future, “when God will be sovereign over all the earth, when there shall be one God with one name.” That is us looking forward. At the same time, after the Shacharit service, we are reminded to pay heed to the “six remembrances” — six Torah texts that speak of events or concepts we are required to always remember. That is us looking backward. Every day.
And on every Shabbat we remember that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
And every Pesach we remember that God took us out of Egypt, the land of bondage.
And every Yom Kippur we look back at the year that was and atone for all that went awry.
And every Yom HaShoah we remember those who were murdered in the gas chambers of Europe.
And every Yom HaZikaron, we remember those soldiers who died for a free nation on our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.
At the time of writing, almost six months have passed since the inhuman horrors of October 7. There is so much we want to forget. But we are Jews. So there is much that we must remember.
Several innovative projects have already sprung up to help commemorate those who were murdered, the communities that were destroyed, and the lives that were lost on and after October 7. Zichron Otef, or Wrapping Memory (a play on Otef Aza, or Gaza Envelope, the area of kibbutzim and towns that was invaded so shockingly on October 7), is an initiative of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem that "aims to capture and commemorate the beauty of the region of the Gaza Envelope as it was before the tragic morning of October 7, 2023, and is dedicated to raising money for the people who were harmed that day." The National Library of Israel has undertaken a massive “global effort to collect materials that reflect the broad historical record of October 7th, the war, and its aftermath,” including “research, surveys, public statements, photographs, videos, social media posts, and more.”
In particular, one of these initiatives could provide a helpful foundation for Jewish day school students to process, grieve, remember, and even forge deep Torah/spiritual connections to current events. Ot-Hayim can mean both “sign of life” and “letter of life.” In this endeavor, graphic designers have begun taking the handwriting of some of the people who were brutally murdered on October 7 or who fell in battle over the past few months, and developing them into individual fonts. As such, I can now type in the handwriting of a Jerusalemite soldier whose funeral I attended, even though I did not know him personally. I can write a note in the font based on the handwriting of a young woman who likely hid in the same bomb shelter at the Nova Festival as my friend’s son. He was taken hostage; she was murdered.
Jewish day schools could focus on the word אות/ot, which is a pivotal one in our tradition. In the Shema prayer, we are enjoined to bind God’s words, God’s commandments, on our arm, as an ot: a sign, or a reminder. Observing Shabbat, as we say in Kiddush each week, is an ot, an active commemorative testament to the fact that God indeed created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
Here are some suggested ways to connect our students to the idea of ot and the Land and people of Israel:
What if students were invited, after learning about the individuals memorialized in this project, to choose a font that was meaningful to them, and after doing a study of those chapters of Tehillim Jews traditionally commit to saying at difficult times, to add one chosen psalm to their daily prayer practice, printed in their chosen font, illuminated, and added to their own siddur?
What if they were invited to learn about safrut sta”m, how Torah scrolls and mezuzot and tefillin are written by scribes, and then undertook some sort of memorialization project whereby they dedicated their copying of Torah texts to the memory of these individuals?
What if they were challenged to come up with their own ways of utilizing these new fonts that represent whole worlds that have been lost and can only be remembered if we proactively remind ourselves of them?
Psalm 86 ends on the following note:
עֲשֵׂה־עִמִּי אוֹת לְטוֹבָה וְיִרְאוּ שֹׂנְאַי וְיֵבֹשׁוּ כִּי־אַתָּה ה’ עֲזַרְתַּנִי וְנִחַמְתָּנִי׃
Speaking to God, the pray-er says:
Show me a sign of Your favor,
that my enemies may see and be frustrated
because You, God, have given me aid and comfort.
It is my hope and prayer that day school students, by looking backward and connecting in a visceral, Torah-inspired way to some of those who have fallen, may find aid and comfort and a way forward.
Aviva Lauer is the Chief Education and Educational Training Officer at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and the Gottesman Family Director of the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
Photo courtesy of the National Library of Israel