A Woman of Valour, A Week of History
Some people move through life with a kind of unmistakable presence.
Helen “Helsie” Brustman was certainly one of them.
She had a gift for colour. Not only the bright lipstick and perfectly done nails that became something of a signature, but a deeper colour she seemed to bring into every room she entered. Helsie loved being part of things. Community events, gatherings, celebrations. If something was happening, she was usually there, not simply attending but helping animate the moment.
Life does not unfold the same way for everyone. Some people turn inward when faced with life’s complexities. Helsie seemed to do the opposite. Whatever life placed before her, she responded by turning outward, giving her time, her warmth and her unmistakable presence to the community around her.
The Talmud offers a deceptively simple idea: “Who is honoured? One who honours others.”
Helsie lived that instinct naturally. She celebrated others, she showed up, and in doing so she helped make our community brighter.
Perhaps that instinct, the refusal to shrink in the face of life’s complexities, is something our community understands particularly well right now.
The week behind us has been one of those moments when history suddenly feels less abstract.
The confrontation between Israel and the Iranian regime is not simply another chapter in a long regional story. It is part of a larger question about the kind of world that will emerge from this decade. Whether extremism organised around intimidation and violence will be allowed to shape the future, or whether it will finally meet resistance.
Golda Meir once observed, with characteristic clarity, “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”
For decades the Iranian regime has invested enormous resources not in the flourishing of its own people, but in exporting instability. Funding militias, arming proxies and openly declaring its desire to see the Jewish state erased.
And yet the story unfolding now is more complicated than the usual slogans allow.
Because history rarely moves in straight lines.
Across the Middle East, including within Iran itself, there are millions of people hoping for something very different. A region defined not by ideological confrontation, but by ordinary life, opportunity and dignity.
David Ben Gurion once suggested that in Israel “in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”
It was not meant romantically. It was an observation about Jewish history.
The Jewish people have always lived with a particular kind of realism. The ability to recognise danger clearly while still believing that the future can change.
Perhaps that is why communities like ours continue to build, gather and participate even when the world feels unsettled.
Helsie understood that instinctively. She brought colour where it was needed and joy where it might otherwise have been missing. In her own way she reminded us that optimism is not naïve. It is a choice.
The Jewish story has always required that kind of resolve.
This week has reminded us what it means to live through history. Not the kind we read about years later with the comfort of hindsight, but the kind that unfolds in real time, uncertain and unresolved. There are moments of darkness, moments that test resolve and clarity.
But Jewish history reminds us that darkness is never the final chapter. Across centuries, again and again, light has outlasted those who tried to extinguish it.
So as Shabbat arrives, we do what Jews have always done in moments like this. We pause. We gather around a table. We bless the challah and the wine. And we remind ourselves that even when the world feels unsettled, the Jewish story has never been defined by the darkness around it, but by the light we insist on carrying forward.
Shabbat Shalom.
Elyse Schachna
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