October 7, 2024 showed up right between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as if emphasizing this dialogue we’re having with the world around us, on all its levels, through the two calendars.In Israel, it was not to be missed with its ceremonies, films, interviews, stories, remembrances, and a night show of sirens and “booms.”
And yet.
October 7th is not my day. Not my date. Yes, I know,“the 7th of the 10th” became such a concept that even on the 17th of Tammuz someone said, “7 plus 10 equals 17! That’s the day the walls were breached!”…Maybe. But for me, this war started on Shmini Atzeret, celebrated in Israel with Simchat Torah, the 8th day of “assembly,, the day the world stopped.
And somewhere there, between the 7th and the 8th – that’s the whole story.
The number 7 describes things within nature. Sheva (7) is related to the word “save’a” – satiated, full, exact, not too much and not too little. There are seven days of the week; seven blessings for the bride and groom; seven days of mourning; seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot; seven years to Shmita. Seven describes the circles of life that we move through It is our physical, “normal”, everyday existence, here and now, in this world.
But eight. Eight is a different story.
The first 8th day is the first day we were able to actively participate in this world, after the seven days of creation. This is the day of brit-mila, circumcision, the day of the covenant between us and God. The Torah portion Shmini tells about the inauguration of the Tabernacle, the point where heaven and earth connect. The Hebrew root for the number eight, shmone, is shared with fat (shamen) and oil (shemen), expressing that which fills too much, which overflows and spills over. Most of all, “eight” leaves the known places in the circles of life, and goes to the unknown, like the number eight that looks like an infinity sign, going on and on and on…
The holiday of Sukkot, the holiday of all nations, is seven days long. Those seven days – wonderful and beloved in their own way – describe the orderly world and its rules. In them we have actual things to touch and hold, a Sukkah and the four species. But you, says the Holy One to us, please pause, atzor, stay with me for one more day. You don’t have to bring anything, there are no items and symbols.Just come as you are.It’s a day for just us; a day of going above and beyond.
While we very much live in this physical world, we are asked to remember that that’s not all there is. There is so much we don’t know and cannot understand. Maybe we forgot that. Maybe we started thinking – knowing!–that Justice, Knowledge, Truth are clearly, decisively, exclusively with “us”, whoever we are, whatever side we are on. Then, it turned out that we too, did not and still don’t “know” everything. We are invited to live, not with either-or, but with both/and–to keep doing and acting and being in this world as if everything depends on us (as with the world of “seven”), and simultaneously, to holding an awareness that there is more, a part that is unknown (as in the world of “eight”).
This seeming duality might help us approach this year’s question: to celebrate Simchat Torah or to not? celebrate? There are those who say that we can never dance again, and those who say we must keep up the festive tradition. My answer is yes to both. In the words of Rabbi Yehoshua to those who wanted to take upon themselves stringent mourning practices following the Temple’s destruction: “it is impossible not to mourn. But to mourn too much, is also impossible” (Bava Batra 60:b). We should not cancel the holiday, but to be oblivious to everything that happened last year and since, aside from being insensitive, might mean learning nothing, and that too, holds its dangers.
Recently, I came across a collection of articles called Ha-Ma’ayan, an expanded issue on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. It was published in Tishrei 5783/2023, shortly before this war. Among the authors, Rav Dr. (reservist Lt. Col.) Mordechai Halperin, who was a young rabbi at the Golan Yeshiva at the time,tells about the supersonic “booms” in the middle of Yom Kippur morning prayer, the airplanes overhead, and the heavy bombing when hundreds of shells rained down on his moshav all through that afternoon.
The rabbi himself was recruited Saturday night and transferred to Sinai as the head of a rabbinic military force designated for the removal and proper burial of bodies from the combat zone. In his essay he describes countless difficult moral, human and halakhic dilemmas during the war. One of them is when he’s told – on Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah (5733 / 1973) – to go out in order to collect bodies of soldiers in an IDF post that was conquered by Egyptians on Yom Kippur, and then again conquered by the IDF. He opens the paragraph about this horrific experience with the words: “On Simchat Torah, after the completion of the hakafot (dancing around with the Torah)”…..
These first few words deeply touched me. Simchat Torah 1973 was less than two weeks after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. We were then in the middle of a war, which began with a surprise attack on two fronts at the same time; a war that within three weeks would claim almost twice as many deaths as we have experienced in this whole last year, at a time that the State of Israel had between a third and a half of its current Jewish population. How did anyone think of hakafot in the midst of all this?
I wrote Rav Halperin and asked him: Were there actually hakafot on Simchat Torah 1973? He answered: “There were regular hakafot with an adjustment to the soldiers and officers’ daily schedule. No one thought of forgoing Simchat Torah. On the contrary. The joy was powerful and enormous in the participants’ hearts. So later, we went to the dangerous Suez Canal area without feeling fear and without dread…” I wonder if maybe history is not that different nowadays from what it always was. It’s just that this time, it’s ours.
Rav Chaim Soloveitchik wrote about 80 years ago: “Simchat Torah… the holiday is not called “Simchat Israel” (i.e. the joy of Israel) but Simchat Torah (that is – the joy of the Torah), and it is not (that important) that Israel rejoice in the Torah, but the main thing is that the Torah rejoices in Israel“…
On the other hand, it is told about Rav Yisrael Salanter who seemed sad one Simchat Torah, that he explained to his students:
“Suppose someone had joy and sorrow from two separate matters, then the joy from the one might reduce the worry and sadness over the other.ut if the joy and sorrow are from the same issue, then it’s different. For example, what if someone has an only child who is wonderful and beloved and his father rejoices in him, but then this child becomes terribly sick. In that case, the joy cannot relieve the sadness but rather,the greater is the joy the child brings, the greater will be the pain caused by his illness. So it is for us.”Rav Salanter spoke on the Torah, which brings joy but also suffering. We can liken it to the situation in Israel: the greater the joy and pride in our homeland, the greater the distress and fear over the situation at hand.
Which means to me, especially on this Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, not to choose either or none, but both.
Last year, after Shabbat and chag, I decided to post on facebook, asking my friends overseas to not skip Simchat Torah. Recently, a dear friend sent that post back to me. It read:
This might sound like a crazy thing to say, considering the news, and I write it with tears in my eyes, but today, outside of Israel, is SIMCHAT TORAH and if you’re able to celebrate safely, however you opt to do so, even if there’s no synagogue nearby and you’re just dancing in your home, plz, plz do so!
You might think, how can you say this, this is no time for celebration!… so, I agree, don’t drink too much; don’t eat too much; let your voice choke when you sing; dance with tears in your eyes; but… don’t let them win this war, don’t let them take away our holiday as well!
This year, as I’m writing this between the sukkah and the mama”d (home safe room), I realize I may not be able to make it to shul, but wherever I am, I hope to dance. Tears may be running down my face as sadness and joy, gratitude and fear, gloom and glory, known and unknown, all blend into one. Especially in Israel, putting Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah together means we don’t have to choose. We can embrace it all in our people’s “rain dance,” then ask for a good year, life, and blessings as we start once again.
Moa’dim Lesimcha & Chag Sameach
