Birth and Rebirth

Newsletter January 27, 2025 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...

My birthday is this Saturday. (Celebrating this Friday night at services with Keeping It Sacred, register HERE). But really, I have had so many births and rebirths over the course of my life. Haven't we all? We are not the same person born into the world; we have pushed through challenges, we have endured unmentionable hardships, we have found our limits, and we have awaken to our loves and purpose.  

Our human experience is filled with births and rebirths as the Billy Jonas Band called "Return Again" reminds us. We are born and reborn again. 

But our Jewish story is also one of being born and reborn again. This past week, three more hostages were returned from Gaza. It is not uncommon for those returned to mark their day of return as their new birthday-- the day they entered into the world anew. Newly present, now walking the world as a survivor and having to grapple with the past 400+ days. And also newly awake to the fragile beauty of life.

Today also marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; also known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And on this day, tied to that awful place, I can’t help but think of my step-grandmother, Hana Posin, whose life took so many twists and turns.

She was born as Hana Mautner in the Czech Republic in 1914, was studying to become a lawyer and married Max Wiener, but then the Nazis separated the two and she was made a prisoner and sent to work camps and eventually to the death camp, Auschwitz. 

Miraculously 80 years ago today, those tortured in that camp were liberated, and she survived. I cannot imagine the terrors of her experiences in the camps and the great grief of later finding out her husband was murdered as well as her parents. 

In the Displaced Person’s camp she met another person named Max Posin, who had endured a similar journey. He came to find out that his parents, wife, and their young daughter were killed in death camps. 

In their great grief, somehow, their spirits connected and they made a new life together in Columbia. With the births of their kids Tom and Michael (my stepfather), they were reborn again as new parents, and with a migration eventually to Los Angeles, reborn again. 

Their stories followed the trajectory of the formation of a happy life, thrust into terror, relieved as a survivor, thrown into the depths of grief, and eventually commitment to reasserting their tenderhearted humanity. Their lives consisted of huge waves of being born and reborn again.

Each of us, more subtly, are being born and reborn again. Each year, we grow and change, and have the opportunity to reflect and adjust. Each day, actually, presents an opportunity, and so it is in our best interest to ask ourselves: in what ways would you like to be birthed anew? 

Our Keeping It Sacred community knows each of us keep evolving and changing, and together, we celebrate one another’s existence, births, and rebirths.

Together, we’re #keepingitsacred…

Rabbi Heather Miller,

Founder, Keeping It Sacred

---

The above is an excerpt from a Keeping It Sacred newsletter. If you want to read the entire newsletter or any from our archives, please head over to: keepingitsacred.com/news 

And if you'd like the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week, please share your name and email address in the fields at the bottom of the page in the purple boxes.

Thanks for your interest, and thanks for #keepingitsacred...