JERUSALEM (RNS) — Iran’s massive missile attack on Israel Tuesday night (Oct. 1) put a further damper on Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year, when many families come together for what is traditionally a joyous holiday.
“Ordinarily, there is a feeling of anticipation that the house will be full,” said Paul Mirbach, who lives on a kibbutz in the Galilee, in northern Israel. As in years past, Mirbach’s entire family was expected to gather at his house Wednesday evening, when Rosh Hashana observance begins, with the addition of his son’s new fiancé. Instead, his son has been called up for military reserve duty.
“How can we get excited for Rosh Hashana when he won’t be home and we are worrying about where he is and what he’s doing, and his fiancé is, too?” Mirbach told RNS.
Like every other year, Jews around the world are preparing for the Rosh Hashana holiday, but the days leading up to the holiday have been far less festive this year, especially in Israel, as the country is still mourning the 1,200 people killed by Hamas last Oct. 7 and yearning for the return of the 101 hostages, both alive and dead, that the terror group is still holding captive in Gaza.
Besides somber home celebrations, Israel’s Home Front Command is limiting the number of people who can congregate due to Tuesday’s attack, forcing the cancellation of preholiday Selichot services and making it difficult for many Israelis to pray in a synagogue.
People take cover on the side of a road as a siren sounds a warning of incoming missiles fired from Iran on a freeway in Shoresh, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in Israel, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
With the army on high alert, and the call-up of tens of thousands of civilian reservists this week as Israel intensified its war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, there will be many more empty seats around the dinner table.
Holiday sales still abound this year, but the “Happy New Year” signs that normally accompany them are nearly absent. So are the silly holiday memes and holiday-themed videos that Jews typically share on social media.
“It’s noticeably quieter where I live, with several shuls (synagogues) within a few blocks,” said Irene Rabinowitz, a Jerusalem retiree.
Like many Israelis, Rabinowitz said she will be observing Rosh Hashana this year, but not celebrating.
“Personally, I’ve kind of separated from praying this year and still haven’t made up my mind about going to shul (synagogue), which would be a first for me. I’m in a Michael Stipe frame of mind. That’s me in a corner,” Rabinowitz said, quoting a line from the REM song “Losing My Religion.” “I’ll be home reading, chilled most likely, though grateful for every day.”
The theological questions related to Rosh Hashana — a holiday that calls on Jews to take stock of their actions and to repent before God decides their fate — are taking on added meaning in the face of so much death and misery. Many Jews have been asking where God was on Oct. 7 and why he allowed the massacre to happen.
Rabbi Doron Perez isn’t one of them. “We don’t know how divine providence works. Every year good people pass away,” said Perez, executive chairman of the World Mizrachi movement.
One of those people was the rabbi’s 22-year-old son, Daniel, an Israel Defense Forces tank commander killed in battle against Hamas on Oct. 7. Hamas continues to hold his body captive in Gaza.
Despite the loss of his son, Perez said he still believes in God’s goodness and mercy. “There is a line in the holiday liturgy that says ‘repentance, charity and prayer change the evil decree,’” he said.
“But Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a leading rabbinic scholar, said that if you read the words carefully, it says, ‘repentance, charity and prayer will change the evil of the decree.’”
Devastated though Perez is by his son’s death, “I can see a lot of mercy,” he said. “We learned that Daniel didn’t suffer, and that he wasn’t alive while in the hands of his captors. He died while defending others. He died mercifully and in a meaningful way. It could have been so much worse.”
Rachel Sharansky Danziger, an educator and co-author of “We Will Sing Again,” a compilation of original women’s prayers written since the Oct. 7 attack, said she has been struggling with traditional liturgy. “For the past year I have been left wondering how we are supposed to pray again with the same familiar words when we are faced with this reality, and we are no longer the people we were a year ago.”
The answer came to Danziger during the shiva of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American Israeli who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 and murdered in late August. His parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, became the public face of hostage families over the 11 months that they pleaded with world leaders such as President Joe Biden and Pope Francis to press for the hostages’ release.
People light candles during a vigil in memory of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Jerusalem, Sept. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Listening as Polin led the traditional prayers that Jews recite every day, Danziger had an epiphany.
“Jon was saying all the familiar words he had said when he was praying to God for his son’s survival, and on some level God said no to his prayers. Yet at the shiva, he said those words with the same apparent faithfulness. I thought, if Jon Polin can say them, who am I not to?”
Searching for ways to strengthen her hope and faith this difficult year, Danziger has also drawn strength from her mother, Avital Sharansky, who fought for the release of her husband, Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refusenik imprisoned by the former Soviet Union for more than a decade.
“My mother lived through many Rosh Hashanas when it was not at all certain my father would be set free. Yet she said there was not one moment that she doubted he would be free. I try to hold on to that conviction.”