Yaakov Raskin | From darkness to light – finding hope in troubled times

THIS PAST week, the Jewish community celebrated Simchat Torah, a holiday which concludes and immediately restarts the reading of the Five Books of Moses. Literally meaning ‘Rejoicing in the Torah’, this holiday is the happiest festival on the Jewish calendar.

In addition to the normal festivities, this year we had another reason to celebrate. On the eve of Simchat Torah, the 20 remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza were released. For two long years, these innocent people were held in darkness, abused, and used as bargaining chips by Hamas in their unprovoked war on Israel. Each day of their captivity, Jewish people around the world worried, not knowing whether they were dead or alive.

When images of the hostages reunited with their families began flooding our newsfeeds this past Monday, many of us breathed a massive sigh of relief.

As we danced on Simchat Torah, we understood a new level of joy we’d never previously experienced. Jewish mystical (Hasidic) philosophy teaches a principle that every descent, spiritual or material, leads to a higher ascent later. For instance, in order to climb to the highest spiritual heights, we often first experience the fear and bitterness of the lowest valleys.

The Jewish people felt an indescribable pain waiting for the hostages to be released. We felt compressed, twisted, and in extreme discomfort. It was like we were springs, compressed way too tightly as we imagined the pain and suffering of the hostages.

However, when the hostages were released on the eve of Simchat Torah, it was like that spring was released. We felt an upwelling of tears of happiness and exploded with joy. We reached a new climax which had never previously been achieved. This ancient teaching of descent leading to ascent stopped being a hypothetical principle and suddenly became viscerally real.

In fact, this pattern is built into the very fabric of the universe. On Simchat Torah, we begin reading the Torah anew starting from the book of Genesis, which opens with the famous words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The very first thing God created was light when he said — “Let there be light!”

But this presents a puzzle. Why did God create light on the first day when there was nothing yet to illuminate and no one to see it? Light, by definition, is not an entity in its own right; its sole purpose is to illuminate other objects. The sun itself wasn’t created until the fourth day. Plants, which need light, didn’t appear until the third day. Animals came on the fifth day, and humanity on the sixth. So why light first?

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, explained in a public address on Simchat Torah in 1965 that “Let there be light” was not the creation of physical light that came on the fourth day with the sun and stars. Rather, it was God’s mission statement for all of creation.

Before any organisation begins its work, it must first articulate its purpose and vision. Similarly, before creating the details of our universe, God first defined the mission — Light. The purpose of creation itself is to bring light into darkness, to transform obscurity into clarity, concealment into openness, crisis into opportunity, challenge into growth.

This light that God created on the first day — before there was anyone to see it — represents hope, truth, moral clarity, and purpose embedded within every aspect of the universe, waiting to be discovered and revealed. Our role as human beings is to be ambassadors of light: to find meaning in chaos, to bring illumination to dark places, to transform negativity into positive energy.

The connection between the hostages’ ordeal and the creation of light reveals a profound truth about how God operates in our world. The Rebbe taught that “descent is the beginning of ascent, disconnection is a call to reconnection, and tragedy itself is the prelude to redemption.”

Genesis teaches us how to fulfil this mission even in our present darkness. The great medieval Bible commentator, “Rashi” asked a famous question – why did the Torah begin with the story of creation rather than with the giving of the commandments at Sinai.

His answer was almost prophetic: He said that a time would come when the Jewish people would be accused of stealing the Holy Land. God chose to begin His holy book with the creation story because it establishes that as the creator of heaven and earth, He gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people as an eternal heritage. When ownership is challenged, we can respond with certainty that this land was decreed to us by the master of the universe.

Just as God created light before there was anyone to see it, knowing it would one day be needed, He also set aside a portion of the physical world for the Jewish people as an everlasting inheritance. Both gifts — the mission of light and the land of Israel — were embedded into creation from the very beginning, waiting to be revealed at the right time.

The hostages who descended into the darkest tunnels have now ascended to freedom. Their release on the eve of Simchat Torah was no coincidence — it was a living manifestation of the ancient principle built into creation itself: that the deepest descent precedes the highest ascent, and that even in the darkest places, God’s light is waiting to burst forth.

Throughout this ordeal, Jamaica stood as a beacon, an ambassador of light in a world often shrouded in moral confusion. By standing with Israel when others remained silent, Jamaica fulfilled the very purpose for which God created the universe: to bring light into darkness, to transform crisis into opportunity, to choose courage over convenience.

We pray for the fulfilment of the prophet Isaiah’s vision — an era when “nation will not lift up sword against nation, and they shall not know war any more”. Until that day arrives, the people of Jamaica and Israel will continue transforming challenge into growth, darkness into illumination in a world desperately seeking light.