This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Friday, April 17.
The spring calendar asks something enormous of us. Within the span of just days, we will move from the depths of grief to the fragile edge of pride. From sirens that stop a nation in its tracks to celebrations that fill the streets with song. It’s almost disorienting, how quickly we’re meant to shift, how much we’re meant to hold. And yet, this is the rhythm of Jewish life: to remember, to mourn, to honor, and still to rise.
In Tazria and Metzora, we encounter the strange and intricate world of tzara’at, a condition that appears on skin, garments, even homes. The priest is tasked with careful examination: לראות, to see. They look, they wait, they look again. When someone is afflicted, they are set apart from the community, not as a permanent rejection, but as part of the healing process. And then, just as carefully, there is a path of return. The Torah outlines rituals of reentry, moments of being seen again, restored to the fullness of communal life.
These parshiyot are, at their core, about seeing, about not turning away from what is difficult, painful, or unsettling. And that is exactly what this season of Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom HaAtzmaut demands of us.
On Yom HaShoah, we refuse to look away from the horror of what was done to our people. We bear witness to absence, to loss that cannot be repaired. We say: we will see it, we will remember it, even when it is unbearable. On Yom HaZikaron, we narrow our gaze again, this time to the faces and names of those who gave their lives for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. The grief is particularly piercing. Each life is a world. Each loss, a tear in the fabric of our collective story. And then, almost impossibly, Yom HaAtzmaut arrives. A day of return. Of stepping back into the fullness of Jewish life, of celebrating resilience, continuity, and the fragile miracle of a homeland. Not in denial of what we have seen, but because we have seen it.
Tazria-Metzora teaches us that to be a community is to develop the courage to see clearly, and the compassion to bring one another back in. After isolation, there must be return. After rupture, the possibility of renewal.
As we move through this series of sacred days, don’t rush past any part of it. Just as you let yourself feel the weight of memory on Yom HaShoah. Honor the cost of survival on Yom HaZikaron. And when Yom HaAtzmaut arrives, allow yourself, even if it feels complicated, to notice the light.
Pay attention to who around you is carrying grief. Pay attention to who struggles with celebration. And let us be the kind of community that knows how to hold both. Because to be a Jew, in this moment, is to see deeply, to remember honestly, and still—to choose life, יחד, together.
Rabbi Eve Posen 