JEWISH RESILIENCE: MEMORY, SURVIVAL, AND JOY

Over the holiday (Shavuot, not Memorial Day) I found myself thinking a great deal about resilience. Now that's a normal thing for people dealing with illness, but perhaps less common is relating it to Shavuot.

Let me begin with the very brief reminder that Shavuot is the ancient harvest festival in which our ancestors brought the first fruits of the harvest— the bikkurim—to the Temple in Jerusalem. At the small ceremony to present their offerings, as commanded by the Torah, they were to ritually recite the story of the Jewish people: how we were oppressed and survived; how we were liberated and wandered; and how we ultimately came to settle in the Land of Israel.

The command ended with these words:

“Rejoice in all the good that has been given to you.”

Why? Because that is an essential element of resilience.

Jews cannot deny the reality of pain, danger, grief, or fear. We carry memory with us everywhere. We even joke about it when we say that every holiday is basically "they tried to kill us, we prevailed, let's eat." This is not technically true but it definitely captures the realization of Jewish resilience.

Despite all of our jokes, Judaism is not a civilization built only around anxiety and survival. For even as we are scrupulous in remembering, our tradition insists that memory must also lead us back toward gratitude, joy, and the celebration of life itself.

This is the message I took to my alma mater in February when I spoke at Texas Hillel.

Like the rest of the Jewish world, students there are confronting rising Jew-hatred. It brings feelings of isolation, experiences of intimidation, and a frightening sense of uncertainty. All of this, I reminded them, can make it very difficult to access that sense of joy the Torah wants us to express.

And yet Jewish history teaches that one of the great secrets of Jewish resilience has been precisely our refusal to surrender celebration, meaning, and communal life even during the difficult times.

The British Jewish thinker Melanie Phillips once wrote that the source of Jewish endurance is that Jews “simply love what we are.” We see ourselves as part of an unbroken chain stretching across generations. It is a chain that connects us to those who struggled and suffered. But it is also a chain that connects us to those who survived, rebuilt, and carried Jewish life forward. We remember their hardships not only to mourn them, but to be inspired by their resilience and they many ways they continued to write the Jewish story.

The Jewish response to darkness cannot be retreat.

The only appropriate response is to continue to live as Jews, openly and proudly. To gather together. To celebrate Shabbat and holidays. To study, sing, argue, laugh, build friendships, support one another, and nurture our vibrant Jewish communities. L'dor va-dor—from generation to generation—we have found our way to bringing gladness and gratitude as “first fruits” to the continuing story of our people.

As we all must learn through the ups and downs of life, resilience does not mean ignoring reality. The Torah’s command to rejoice was meant to teach precisely that truth: that despite everything, life itself remains sacred and worth celebrating.

That spirit has carried the Jewish people through every generation before us. It can carry us now as well.

לחיים!

L'chaim!

To Life!