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How Can We Dance on Simchat Torah This Year?
Let me begin with a thanks to Rabbi Efrem Goldberg for inspiring this sermon. Today is the Yahrtzeit of the Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah massacre last year on October 7th—the greatest massacre of our people since the Holocaust. The brutal, cold-blooded murder of innocent men, women and children, young and old, entire families, over 1,200 people, and the horrific kidnapping of 251, rocked our worlds, broke our hearts, and shattered our illusion of safety.
And beyond the loss of life, many of our ideas and assumptions died as well. We lost our innocence, our confidence, and our optimistic view of the Jews in America and the world. A year ago, so much died. For a year we have been in perpetual grief, so how can we dance tonight on Simchat Torah?
But as we reflect, we can look back and see that on October 7th of last year, so much was also born. On the brink of a civil war over judicial reform and religious differences, overnight a sense of Jewish unity, togetherness, and shared destiny was reborn. From the resolve of the devastated communities on the Gaza border to rebuild … driven by displaced families from the north and the south … powered by a record response to the Israel Defense Forces call up … our tenacious nation of eternity was reborn. This was followed by an amazing effort to provide for soldiers needs in the field, to support families of reservists whose father is away and not able to provide for his family, to comforting mourners of soldiers who died, to visiting displaced families and providing provisions … this support and more came from Jews all over the world!
A spiritual awakening of Jewish pride burst forth in Jews who had never experienced their Jewish soul before or in whom it had been dormant. More Jews are now studying Torah, doing mitzvot, and proudly displaying their identity. The Jewish people are now alive, proud, practicing, growing and united.
Yes, things are far from perfect. There are differences and forces trying to divide us again. The war continues to rage, our heroic soldiers are still fighting on multiple fronts, and our precious hostages are still not home. But with all our challenges … with all the lives that were prematurely and tragically snuffed out … so much has come alive. Moshe Naaman, a soldier in the IDF, wrote the following inspiring story last week:
2 weeks ago, we were called up by Order 8 to the northern border. Today, we had the privilege of holding Yom Kippur prayers at Kibbutz Beit Zera. For 93 years, this secular kibbutz never had a Yom Kippur service. But we, as soldiers, set one up in the company area at the kibbutz.
There were 12 religious soldiers among us. We sent a casual WhatsApp invitation to the kibbutz members. When the holiday started, we were shocked—dozens came for Kol Nidrei. In the morning, elderly members came for Yizkor. The climax came with many dozens of people, including children, women, and toddlers, arriving for the closing Neilah service and shofar. We were moved to tears.
What can I say? I never imagined this would happen. The verse from our morning prayers, “Master of Wars, Sower of Kindness,” took on a new meaning for me today. 2 weeks ago, I never imagined I wouldn’t be in shul for the High Holidays. Now I found myself as the shofar blower, gabbai, chazan and speaker … The members kept thanking us after Yom Kippur and tearfully asked us to return next year…
To mark the year since October 7, 2023, Danny Wise of Ami Magazine conducted 38 interviews focusing on the rebuilding efforts of the communities near Gaza. Among his interviews, he met with a woman named Dafna, cultural director of Kibbutz Re’im. She was one of the organizers of the Nova Festival.
Touring the Kibbutz, she showed him her charred house and the room in which her mother and children, Shira and Meir, were found murdered together. She is the lone survivor of her family. Wise writes that throughout the tour he thought of Kristallnacht and the shuls the Nazis destroyed. He asked her if the terrorists destroyed any shuls in the communities along the Gaza envelope.
Dafna responded, “Of course not. Not a single synagogue was damaged in all 21 Gaza kibbutzim.” Wise didn’t understand, how could no shul have been attacked, no Torah Scroll burned?
She explained, “It wasn’t a miracle. Most of these communities didn’t have a shul! If you want to understand the day after, you must understand the day before.”
Wise writes: Rabbi Shlomo Raanan runs an organization called Ayelet Hashachar which seeks to bring outreach to irreligious Kibbutzim. He came up with the idea of a basketball game between yeshivah students and the kibbutzniks of Re’im. The game was set to take place on Sukkot Chol Hamoed, October 2, just 5 days before the massacre. Dafna had led the charge to cancel the game. To her, the match wasn’t just a friendly contest; it was a Trojan horse, a way for religious influence to creep into the kibbutz.
“I was furious,” she told me. “This was outrageous. We didn’t need outsiders telling us who a good Jew is” … In the spirit of peace, Rabbi Raanan canceled the game. 5 days later, the massacre came. Just over the border, now a hostage in the tunnels of Gaza, Dafna found herself face to face with the forces that had torn her world apart. “I said to an older guard in Arabic, why do you torture me? For 20 years, I’ve made programs here for Arabs and Jews. The Jews are your cousins.” As she pleaded in the darkness for some recognition of their shared humanity, she was met not with empathy but with a cold dismissal.
“You are not a descendent of Ibrahim! You are not a Jew!” he spat. “You are a European colonialist who stole our land! It was in that moment, Dafna said, that something broke. Or perhaps, something began to be repaired. The accusation hit hard. Like many in the Kibbutz movement, Dafna had spent her life defining herself more as an Israeli than a Jew, and more dedicated to reconciling Arabs and Israelis than healing the divides between different groups of Jews…
“For the 1st time in my life I saw my soul; I saw that I am a Jew. All my life I’ve been part of this community. We didn’t see ourselves as Jews, but Israelis…But when he called me a colonialist, it hit me. He didn’t see me as a Jew because I didn’t see myself as a Jew!”
Dafna paused for a moment, her eyes wandering over the ruined landscape. “Every Arab village has a mosque. Christian settlements build churches. And here, we have nothing. Nothing to say that we are Jews. And in that moment, I realized that if we were going to rebuild, we needed to reclaim our identity. I took upon myself the new Beit Knesset (synagogue) project. When we rebuild, our Beit Knesset will be the most beautiful structure on the kibbutz.”
On Simchat Torah, Dafna lost her family, but she found herself. They died, and her Jewish identity was reborn.
The holiday and festivities of Simchat Torah are unusual in their origins. Simchat Torah is not mentioned in the Torah nor the Talmud. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z”l, writes that the origins of Simcha Torah come from Jews in the Middle Ages who sang and danced on the 2nd day of Shemini Atzeret in the face of Christian persecution: They were determined to show Gd, and the world, that they could still be “ach same’ach,” as the Torah said about the holiday: wholly, totally, given over to joy. It would be hard to find a parallel in the entire history of the human spirit, of a people capable of such joy at a time when they were being massacred in the name of the Gd of love.
My friends, a people that can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and still rejoice in Gd and in His Torah, is a people that cannot be defeated by any force or any fear. Simchat Torah was born when Jews had lost everything else, but they never lost their capacity to rejoice in Gd and in His Torah —and that’s why we will rejoice tonight. A people whose capacity for joy cannot be destroyed is indestructible.
The year since last year’s Simchat Torah has been a fulfillment of the saying: “They tried to bury us; they did not know we were seeds!” A year ago, we lost so many. But over this year, we birthed a new era, a new chapter for our people. That chapter is still being written and only we can determine how it will read.
How can we honor all those martyrs who died Oct 7th and since at Yizkor today? How can we honor the memories of our parents and loved ones we come here to remember? “The only proper response,” says Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, “is to birth a better version of ourselves as Jews in this New Year.” Amen!
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