It is the question on everyone’s mind, one fraught with emotion, uncertainty, and no small amount of dread.
Simchat Torah, the day of rejoicing for the sacred law given to us at Sinai, is quickly approaching. It is traditionally marked with vibrant song and exuberant dance, as Jews of all ages exult in our heritage, raising aloft Torah scrolls as they encircle the synagogue platform.
But last year, Simchat Torah took on an entirely new meaning when Hamas terrorists and other Gazans invaded southern Israel, murdering more than 1,200 Jews, burning alive families, gang-raping women, and kidnapping Holocaust survivors and children.
The scars left on our collective psyche are still raw and painful. The horrific events of that day continue to cast a heavy shadow over our people – as they will likely do until the end of time.
And so the quandary we face is rather harsh and straightforward: Can we – or should we – still celebrate Simchat Torah?
Or to put it even more sharply: How can we possibly celebrate on the anniversary of the slaughter?
How can we celebrate Simchat Torah after Oct. 7 massacre?
The question becomes yet more pointed when one considers the fact that Simchat Torah is an ancient and beloved custom, one that dates back well over a thousand years to the Geonic era in Babylon.
Indeed, the very day itself is defined by joy and has been for centuries. As Rabbi Moses Isserles, in his glosses to the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 669), wrote in the 16th century, the last day of Sukkot “is called ‘Simchat Torah’ because we rejoice on it, making a festive meal in honor of the finishing of the Torah.”
Furthermore, he notes, the custom to remove the Torah scrolls from the Ark both at night and on the morning of the holiday, while singing songs of praise, is “done out of joy.”
Hence, to simply dismiss the celebration out of hand would itself seem flippant and inappropriate.
THE ANSWER to our dilemma lies in the past, amid the rich textbook that is Jewish history.
The sad truth is that our generation is hardly the first to ask whether under frightful circumstances we can, or should, celebrate on Simchat Torah.
Just 51 years ago, less than two weeks after the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel found itself battling Egyptian forces that had invaded Sinai.
During a moment of respite, IDF soldiers on the front lines nonetheless took the time to park their tanks and dance in the desert with Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah.
It was a fitting show of defiance and resilience, one that surely energized the troops to continue pressing forward.
Seven years earlier, in 1966, Elie Wiesel published his classic work, The Jews of Silence: A Personal Report on Soviet Jewry. One of the highlights of the book is his vivid description of visiting the main synagogue in Moscow, where to his shock he found thousands of Russian Jews defying their Soviet Communist oppressors as they came out to rejoice on Simchat Torah. Even the vaunted and vicious thugs of the KGB were no match for the ebullience of the day.
Decades later, in a talk at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Wiesel said, “When the time comes, and I will have to appear before the celestial tribunal, and they will ask, ‘What did you do with your life?’ I will say, ‘I was there in Moscow. I saw them dancing on Simchat Torah.’ And I told the tale of the dancing.”
Such is the power of the festival.
In a separate talk, Wiesel provided yet another powerful and compelling example of Jewish insistence on embracing the day amid tragedy, observing that even in Auschwitz, Jews did not refrain from marking the holiday.
Noting that the Vilna Gaon had once reportedly said that the most difficult mitzvah in the Torah to fulfill is that of ve’samachta be’chagecha (“you shall rejoice on your festival”), Wiesel said he could never understand this remark.
Only during the Holocaust, he told his audience, “did I understand. Those of us who, in the course of our journey to the end of hope, managed to dance on Simchat Torah on the day of the celebration of the law; those Jews who studied Talmud by heart, while carrying stones on their back; those Jews who went on whispering the Sabbath songs while performing hard labor – they taught us how Jews should behave in the face of adversity.”
And then, he concluded, “For my contemporaries a few generations ago, that commandment was one commandment that was impossible to observe – yet they observed it.”
I BELIEVE that is exactly how we should view this coming Simchat Torah. On the one hand, it seems inconceivable to dance; yet on the other, we must.
If Jews in the midst of battle in Sinai, persecuted by the Soviets in Moscow, or surrounded by death at Auschwitz celebrated Simchat Torah despite it all, then we too can – and must! – follow their example.
Not only for our own sake but also for those of our brethren still being held in the dungeons of Gaza, longing to return to their families.
And let’s shake the heavens when we do.■
The writer served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.