(RNS) — I remember the first time I heard God speaking.
It wasn’t specifically to me. It was to everyone — or, at the very least, anyone who was watching “The Ten Commandments,” the classic 1956 film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Charlton Heston as Moses. It was a remake of DeMille’s 1923 silent film, and the 1956 film was to have been his final cinematic effort.
Recall the scene of the revelation of the Ten Commandments: the sound and light show, a kitschy imagining of what it must have been like to stand at Mount Sinai.
It is now Shavuot, the festival that commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. We stood at Sinai then; we stand at Sinai again, perhaps every day.
Sinai was the birthplace of Judaism as a religion. Today when we stand at Sinai, we wonder about what has been revealed to us.
Boulder attack suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman on the Pearl Street Mall, Sunday, June 1, 2025, in Boulder, Colo. (Video screen grab)
This day’s revelation occurred just as the holiday was beginning. We heard the news of the latest act of antisemitic violence — the attack in Boulder, Colorado, at a peaceful event on June 1 that called for the release of the hostages taken from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, allegedly used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to set people on fire, yelling “Free Palestine” during the attack. Eight victims were injured, ages 52 to 88.
The attacker wanted to burn Jews. Did I mention that one of the victims was a Holocaust survivor? Just get your mind around that.
Let me take you back to that Friday evening, Oct. 6, 2023. On that evening, as Shabbat and Simchat Torah descended upon us, the entire Jewish people went to sleep.
By the time we woke up the next morning on Oct. 7, we had gone out one era and into another. We were now in a post-Oct. 7 Judaism. As my friend and teacher Rachel Korazim said to me: “Oct. 7 will become a new date — as we count our history from the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem.”
As we think of that post-Oct. 7 Judaism, let us think of its new book of lamentations. Rachel, along with Michael Bohnen and Heather Silverman, translated poems that emerged from Israel after Oct. 7 into a book, “Shiva: Poems of October 7.” Here is our column and podcast on it.
The book contains the poem, “We Need A New Torah Now,” by Elchanan Nir — an Orthodox poet and writer who teaches at a yeshiva in Efrat on the West Bank:
Now like a breath of fresh air
We need a new Torah.
Gasping for air and with choking throats
We need a new Mishnah and a new Gemara
A new Kabbala and new Elevations of the Soul
And from the midst of all the wreckage, the salt and the desert land, now
A new Hasidism and a new Zionism
A new Rabbi Kook and a new Brenner
A new Leah Goldberg and new Yechaveh Da’at
New art and new poetry
New literature and new cinema
And new-ancient words
New ancient souls from the treasury
And a new love out of the terrible weeping.
For we were all washed in the rivers of Rei’m and Be’eri.
And we have no other mountain within us
Nor another ten commandments
No other Moses and no more strength
From this moment everything is
In our hands
What is Nir saying?
- “Elevations of the Soul” refers to a mystical experience of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism.
- “Rabbi Kook” was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Palestine before the creation of the state of Israel, who was a mystical thinker and a religious nationalist.
- “Brenner” refers to Joseph Chaim Brenner, a prominent Hebrew writer and secular Zionist.
- “Leah Goldberg” was an iconic Israeli poet.
- “Yechaveh Da’at” is the collection of rabbinic answers to legal questions, compiled by Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel.
A new, post-Oct. 7 Judaism would be a messy mixture of the mystical, the rational, the national, the religious, the secular, the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic. It would include new art, poetry, literature and cinema. The new, post-Oct. 7 Judaism would break apart all the conventional barriers between Judaism as a religion and Judaism as culture.
Why? Because “we were all washed in the rivers of Re’im and Be’eri.” Re’im and Be’eri were two kibbutzim destroyed on Oct. 7. To be washed in the rivers reminds us of the Israelites crossing the parted waters of the Sea of Reeds. It was that precise moment they became a people.
As the Exodus from Egypt was the beginning of Judaism, Re’im, Be’eri and all the other places of destruction on Oct. 7 were the beginning of a new Judaism.
“We need a new Torah now.” Achshav. As in the old Israeli pioneer folk song: “Achshav, achshav, b’emek Yezreel …” “Now, now, in the valley of Jezreel …” — we must renew our land and build our state now. As in the “achshav” of Shalom Achshav, Peace Now, the Israeli anti-war movement, we must seek peace with our Arab neighbors “now.” As in “free the hostages, now!”
It is the lesson of immediacy. The new Torah we need now is one that says to Jews: Embrace your Judaism, in all its complexity.
Rachel reminded me of the posters at demonstrations in Israel, which read, “Mi kan aleinu,” meaning, “From here, going forth, it is on us.”
It is now on us. It is on us to create a new Judaism with new-ancient words.
It is on us to create “new ancient souls from the treasury.” I have always thought this was the real goal of Judaism: to create old souls — to reach back into the treasury of souls and to retrieve them.
And, yes, it is on us to create “a new love out of the terrible weeping.” A love of a new-ancient Judaism; a love of a new-ancient Jewish people; a love of a new-ancient land — how Herzl imagined it.
And, a love of the new-ancient God, who walks with us in this sorrow, and who teaches us the skills to endure and persevere.
To the pious purveyors of “Free Palestine now!”; you virtue signalers who seek to “globalize the intifada;” who mock with your spittle the compassion that many Jews feel about the forlorn of Gaza; who believe that all Jews must pay for Gaza with their blood, as you believed/believe all Jews must pay for calvary with their blood: Your hatred only serves to increase my love — of my people, my heritage, my land and my God.
