We Begin Again
by Lauren Tuchman
It is a deep joy for me to begin our new cycle of Torah with you all. Here we are, beginning again. Some of us may be encountering a new Torah cycle for the first time while for others of us, we are returning to something at once familiar and complex; difficult and uplifting; joyous and unfathomably painful. Torah holds it all and we, too, are richly encouraged to do the same.
As we begin this year of Torah, I invite us to embark upon this new journey with curiosity and intention. What might we bring to Torah this year and what might it bring to us?
At the end of the public reading of a book of Torah, the congregation often says, “may we each be strengthened and may we all strengthen one another.” (Rabbi Tuchman’s interpolation). There’s simultaneously a sense of finality and possibility. Just as we’ve reached the end of a book, so, too, may we merit to begin the next with the hope that this book, too, will reach its end and we will yet again begin again. Beginning, then, isn’t a linear act, as if we’ve never encountered the text. It’s cyclical, perhaps even a spiral, something we return to year after year. We return changed, different people than we were the year prior. Life has worked on us. Though the Written Torah remains unchanged, we, carrying as we do the Torah we learn, the Torah that is ours to teach and the Torah we will yet receive are open. Torah cannot be skillfully placed into a box or assumed to mean one thing only.
I vividly recall once being at a clergy student retreat while in rabbinical school in which seminarians from Jewish and Christian seminaries were present. We were invited to offer definitions of key terms or religious ideas from our tradition to members of the other. My Jewish peers and I determined that of course Torah was a primary term worth defining. We hosted a learning session for our Christian colleagues with the intention of defining multiple key terms from our tradition. Forty-five minutes after beginning to define Torah, amidst the enthusiasm, debate, and excitement the topic engendered amongst us, we realized, sheepishly, that we needed to bring our session to a close, having demonstrated the famous rabbinic notion that there are seventy faces to Torah. Seventy, for the rabbis, signifies infinity. May we merit this year to find new interpretations, new ways into Torah that we could not have imagined. Indeed, this is what I find so precious about the Disability Torah Project itself. Every piece of Torah contains within it tremendous lived wisdom that immeasurably shifts my understanding of Torah, often challenging my preconceptions and assumptions. And the truth as I am coming to deeply understand it is that we shape Torah as much as it shapes us. The questions about the kind of Torah we want to live and teach this year are of profound importance. Torah can be life-giving and life-destroying. It can be liberating and confining. Painfully ableist and alienating and simultaneously full of possibilities for building a world rooted in disability wisdom and justice. As a teacher of mine asked this summer, what parts of Torah will we choose to listen to? I add to this, how might that intentional listening and taking in impact our practice of Judaism?
Parashat Bereshit is richly multivocal, weaving together threads from many lineages of tradition and sacred story into a tapestry of myth and meaning making. We open with two stories of creation, encounter Adam and Chava in the Garden of Eden, read about the first fratricide and encounter a host of lengthy lineages. As the parsha closes, we read about the Divine becoming disillusioned with the Divine’s creation of humanity, for the desire of humanity is towards violence and disconnection. This then gives a siman—a hint—for what’s to come next. Torah opens complexly. We learn about who we are, how we are and the choices that can lead us towards connection and care and those which produce opposite outcomes. We meet the Divine in a variety of ways as well.
We now turn our attention to the Torah’s opening chapter. This text, at once familiar and intricate, is often read quickly. Yet, as we slow down and take this text in, I find it moving that not only is creation repeatedly called “good” but that there is a sense of profound divine compassion upon creation. The Divine is understood here as creating from care and kindness, reminding us that we are a part of this precious planet that is ours to cherish, not to destroy. It brings to mind for me the teaching found in two slightly different formulations in the “Yotzer Or” blessing before the morning Shma. The Divine renews in goodness creation each day. Jewish tradition understands this idea expansively to mean that we are partners with the Divine in that daily renewal. Each day has potential to shape us in so many ways. The act of creation is both understood as quite static in the Torah’s opening chapter and ongoing in rabbinic imagination. I find this teaching very enlivening because it reminds me on the hardest days that this, too, is impermanent, or as we often say, “this too shall pass.” It grounds me in the knowledge that even as we live in a world of human-made oppressive systems and physical environments that restrict access, that need not be our future. We get to be partners with the Divine, in some large cosmic way, in renewing creation each day.
Parashat Bereshit’s first creation story ends with a beautiful description of Shabbat, recited multiple times in Jewish prayer and ritual practice on Shabbat (Bereshit/Genesis 2:1-3). Here we are told that upon completing the creation of heaven and earth, the Divine rests on the seventh day, blessing and setting it apart. So, too, are we each invited to do the same, however that works for us in our practice, for on Shabbat, the Divine rested from creating all that was made and re-ensouled the Divine self. This notion of Shabbat being a time of re-ensoulment is one of the keys Torah has given me, as a disabled person as a reminder—you get to rest your body. You get to honor that it just takes more energy for you to do things. That crip time is a real and tangible thing. That yes, it’s true, a disabled mental load is actually a lot and perhaps it’s about time you took a day to remember who you are at your core.
May our beginning again of Torah open new possibilities for us this year as we journey forward and may we always remember that we, too, have Torah within us that gets to be known.
Rabbi Lauren Tuchman is a spiritual leader and Jewish educator living just outside of Washington, D.C. Most recently, she was a 2026 recipient of the Pomegranate Prize for Jewish Education from the Covenant Foundation.
