By Nike Silberstein,
Director of Jewish Life & Learning,
On October 6, 2026
While the Nor’easter blew the top off many Sukkahs, I spent the stormy first days of Sukkot finishing a book I had started some time ago: The Book of Abraham by Marek Halter.
Inspired by the author’s own family history, it follows generations of a family of scribes, beginning around the destruction of the Second Temple and traveling through centuries of Jewish life — from Alexandria to Morocco, from Narbonne to Amsterdam, from Italy and Turkey to Odessa and Warsaw.
Along the way, we encounter persecution, pogroms, and blood libels. But we also encounter the joy of births, the pride of Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and the nachas of watching children grow up and raise their own children.
One generation gives way to the next.
There is a word that crystallizes toward the last third of the book:
Endurance.
Endure. Survive. Continue. Keep going despite everything. Believe in new beginnings while rooting ourselves in our dynamic past. Be resilient.
The before and the after.
Nicholas Clairmont recently wrote an essay in The Free Press called The First Rough Draft of 9/11 History. He tells the story of his mother, who, on the morning of September 12, 2001, went out and bought all four major New York City newspapers. She held on to them as she moved from house to house.
Three years ago, Clairmont started a new tradition: to read these yellowed, crinkly papers cover to cover every September 11th.
He reads news of Michael Jordan considering re-retiring from sports, movie times, real estate listings, and words that had been crafted before.
The before and the after of 9/11 were printed side by side in alarming and jarring contrast.
That is what October 7th has done to our Jewish calendar; to our Jewish lives.
This year, the holidays lined up as they did in 2023. In 2023, Shabbat was Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, and some communities in Israel were already dancing around Torah scrolls when the pogrom of 10/7 transpired. It was the final day of a month filled with holidays.
This past Shabbat, I felt the whiplash.
That moment three years ago when the “before” disappeared..
Rachel Goldberg-Polin describes her life as split into “The Before” — a time of family memories, raising children in Jerusalem, and — and “The After,” following the October 7, 2023, abduction and subsequent murder in captivity of her 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
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The opening word of the Torah is — In the Beginning.
In Hebrew, Bereishit.
An often-quoted question is: “Why does the Torah begin with a Bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, rather than an Aleph, the first?”
One answer is that there was a “before.”
There was existence before our world. There were ingredients too. Ingredients that were sorted out and recalibrated. The Torah shows us the world of chaos, and later a world of floods, the Torah also gives us the bright side – the worlds of creation of light and and worlds of olive branches, doves and rainbows- of rebuilding —- we move from Befores and Afters.
The Bet also has a noteworthy shape. It is open on one side, almost like a house — a Bayit, a structure facing toward what comes next.
The Bet leads us to everything that follows in the Torah, the nourishment which has helped the Jewish people build a house wherever we have been. The Torah keeps moving.
Its wisdom survives through us because we hold it as part of ourselves and make it part of our lives.
Etz Chayim Hi — it is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it.
Today, a group of Holocaust survivors were with us for an October 7th memorial. We hung a leaf on our tree of eternal life for October 7th.
The leaf for October 7th says, “May their souls be bound in the bond of life.”
We connect ourselves to this tree of generations.
As Rachel Goldberg-Polin has found, “love is stronger than death.”
In the afterword to the book When We See You Again, Jon Goldberg-Polin writes:
“We are determined to make your tragic death — not all deaths are tragic — a compass to guide our remaining moments here.”
We need this compass to help us know we are in the right direction. To help us figure out where we are going.
We approach the third anniversary of October 7th with continuing pain. We see the ongoing war in Ukraine and the suffering it continues to bring. We see antisemitism and the many challenges facing Jewish communities here and around the world. There is so much that can make us feel overwhelmed.
So that Compass is so important – We play a role because the world is difficult. Because people need a house — where they can learn, celebrate, ask difficult questions, build relationships, and feel that they belong.
We can think creatively about how we bring Jewish life, Jewish values, and Jewish learning to our children.
We are weaving together generations with intelligence, warmth, and deep empathy for the challenges, resilience, and achievements.
The way we can keep moving in this “after” is by doing more and more acts of kindness.
We read the letter Bet as the first letter of the first Torah portion of this new Torah reading cycle. We take stock of everything that has come before — so many generations, so many challenges, and so many celebrations.
The Bet is the first letter of the word Bayit, house.
A house is something we inherited, but it is also something we build.
That is where we are at JCH.
We are celebrating 100 years of Jewish life, learning, community, and service.
And now we are standing at the threshold of our second century in a world that is far from simple.
May this Jewish Community House continue to be a house of life, learning, belonging, courage, and light for this generation, and for all the generations still to come.