Shemini Atzeret will be nothing like the commemoration of October 7, just a few weeks ago. There will be no cameras in our synagogues and no press.
We will not await and then dissect the pronouncements of presidents and politicians.
Communal memorial events will not be competing with those of the pro-Hamas celebrants for space on the quad and on the evening news.
Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah – the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the vicious Hamas attack – will be especially meaningful because our commemorations will be intimately Jewish. It will be just for us. This is long overdue.
The Jewish relationship with the world is complex, to put it mildly. While we compulsively assess whether specific world leaders or events are “good for the Jews,” others hardly seem to consider in any clear-headed manner whether Jews – obsessed with sharing their knowledge, skills, and energies with all of mankind – are “good for the world.”
Col. Golan Vach was injured on September 10, 2024, during operational activities to investigate and dismantle Hamas terror tunnels near Netzarim in Gaza. Vach, 50, who is recovering well, previously founded and commanded the IDF Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Unit and led numerous Israeli rescue missions in disaster zones abroad.
These included assisting after the collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida in 2021 and in the wake of the massive earthquakes in Turkey in 2023 – for which he was awarded a medal of honor by its mercurial and harshly anti-Israel president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Good for the world?
Dr. Zecharya Haber, a 33-year-old father of three, was an IDF reservist who fell in combat in Gaza on January 16, 2024. Zecharya, of blessed memory, was a Torah scholar who had studied in Yeshivat Alon Shevut and received a B.Sc and M.Sc from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Agriculture.
At the time of his death, he was completing his dissertation on improving the productivity of crops in harsh climatic conditions – a priority for plant researchers worldwide – and was awarded a doctorate posthumously by Tel Aviv University.
His work would continue a mission initiated in 1958 by then-Israeli foreign minister Golda Meir, helping African nations navigate their severe developmental challenges in food security. Good for the world?
These two Israeli soldiers’ dedication to serve as a source of blessing for all is hardly unique. Jews everywhere support general social causes in their communities and in the world at large.
They are more charitable than other Americans at all income levels and make up nearly half of America’s 25 biggest philanthropic donors, with almost none of their major gifts directed to the Jewish community.
Jews have generously funded the same universities and hospitals where the current surge in antisemitism is concentrated. Where is the world’s appreciation for these efforts?
Especially over the past year, our frustration with the world’s moral blindness has drained us emotionally and taken a severe toll on our hopefulness.
At every turn, we wait for the world to finally “get it,” for world leaders to stand with Israel without equivocation and support the nation in doing what must be done to bring our hostages home and defeat the monstrous evil that threatens us all.
We vainly expect the media to recognize the difference between those who have introduced moral leadership and technological breakthroughs and those who have made security lines at airports a necessity.
Those failed expectations intruded on our commemoration of October 7, 2024, as we invited the world to join us in mourning this tragic year.
A different type of celebration
Now, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are here, and there will be no such expectations.
Instead of cameras, press statements, and politicians, we will join together as Jews to celebrate God, the Torah, and community, commemorating this devastating yahrzeit (anniversary) as a nation that dwells alone but that is never alone; as we have each other and as we “fear no evil, for You are with me.” (Psalm 23:4) Sukkot has always been a festival focused on benefiting the world; the Temple service included the offering of 70 bulls on behalf of the 70 nations of the world. But then, as now, that hardly translated into appreciation from those nations.
A midrash records our national frustration as we asked God: “Master of the Universe, we do all this to benefit them; should they not love us back? Yet as the Psalmist said (109:4), “in return for my love they despise me.” God’s response, as recorded in the midrash, was to tell us to take one more day just for us.
On this day, Shemini Atzeret, God instructs us to stop looking for the appreciation of those nations whom we work so hard to benefit and to take this day to rejoice with Him in our enduring dedication to His word and in the privilege of being part of this special nation and its mission.
“On the Shemini (eighth day) Atzeret it shall be for you.” This day is just for you. Finally.
The writer is executive vice president of the Orthodox Union (OU).