JERUSALEM (RNS) — Jews around the world are attempting a difficult spiritual straddle this week: how to celebrate the joyous holiday of Simchat Torah on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.
While Oct. 7 is the day on the Western calendar that Hamas attacked Israel’s Gaza-border communities last year, the massacre of 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals occurred on the 22nd day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei — the day Israelis and many liberal Jews celebrate Simchat Torah. In the diaspora, many Jews celebrate Simchat Torah a day later.
“Last Simchat Torah saw the greatest pogrom since the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Benjy Myers, CEO of the Straus-Amiel Rabbinical Emissary Institute in Jerusalem. “On the one hand, we have no choice but to remember and mourn all who were senselessly murdered on that day. At the same time, we want to show we are a religion of life, and we do that by celebrating. The challenge is finding the balance between not going overboard with either celebrating or mourning.”
Simchat Torah, which this year begins in Israel at sundown on Wednesday (Oct. 23), and on Oct. 24 in the diaspora, marks the end of the liturgical year in Judaism, when congregations read the final chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book in the Torah, and begin the annual cycle again with the Book of Genesis.
During the seven hakafot, or rounds of celebration, select congregants carry the Torah scrolls and lead all the other members in spirited singing and dancing to celebrate the end and start of the new cycle.
How to honor this tradition while memorializing those lost since last Simchat Torah, and centering the 101 hostages still being held by Hamas, has preoccupied rabbis and lay leaders.
Myer’s institute, which oversees the work of 150 couples who serve as educational emissaries to Jewish communities around the world, has asked the emissaries to adapt their holiday observances to the specific needs of their individual communities. If someone in the community lost loved ones in the massacre or subsequent war, their community can dedicate one of the hakafot to their memory, recite their names out loud during the traditional Yizkor memorial service or remember them in a sermon.
The Rabbinical Council of Tzohar, an Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization, suggests that communities hold a silent hakafah, in which congregants walk around the ark of the Torah “more or less in silence.” Afterward, “it is recommended to sing uplifting, emotional tunes” in memory of the victims, for the hostages, for the success of the Israeli military and the well-being of those displaced by war.
Tzohar also recommends limiting the festivities (and alcoholic beverages) around Kiddush, the refreshments and light meal served following prayers, “in order to express the pain that accompanies our joy.”
Kehilat Yedidya, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem, will dedicate the seven hakafot to specific values and goals: silence (as a statement that the Jewish people are left without words); redeeming captives; bravery; acts of kindness and mutual solidarity; joy; hope; and peace. Specific songs have been chosen for each hakafah.
For congregants who feel they cannot participate in the hakafot this year, the synagogue will hold a parallel option: small discussion groups where people can share their thoughts and feelings in a “safe and supported” environment.
Kehilat Nava Tehilla, a music-centered Jewish Renewal community in Jerusalem, will hold an expanded Yizkor and avoid the levity and “funny shticks” typical of a Simchat Torah celebration, said Rabbi Ruth Kagan, the congregation’s spiritual leader.
The hakafot will be accompanied by the type of dance and movement “that will allow us to feel the full range of our feelings. We will be moving through the difficulty, without denying it and, hopefully, through the power of community and prayer, touch places of hope, strength, love and maybe even joy. Every year we take joy for granted. It’s Simchat Torah after all. This year we will not be pushing it but let it unfold by itself,” Kagan said.
An installation featuring a Shabbat table, with empty chairs representing hostages taken by Hamas, at the Lincoln Memorial, Oct. 27, 2023, in Washington. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
In the United States, the Orthodox Union is encouraging its rabbis to transform the ordinary Simchat Torah Kiddush meal into an event marking the completion of a communal learning project in honor of the Oct. 7 victims. “There are few days in synagogue life that rival Simchat Torah as a day when communities come together. We expect it to be a very emotional day,” said Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the OU’s executive vice president.
Rabbi Michal Morris Kamil, the new rabbi of Congregation Beth El-Ner Tamid in Broomall, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, said the massacre “created an enormous shift in all that was certain and solid in life’s perspectives. So much has been lost, injured. This past year has highlighted how fragile life really is and how little control we really have in the ‘big picture’ of existence.”
At the same time, Kamil noted, the Torah commands Jews to be happy during Sukkot and Simchat Torah. “It is a time to reconcile the commandment of being ‘happy’ as a healing measure religiously prescribed to ensure that the flame of ‘hope’ remains alight even when it feels counter intuitive.”
While Kamil has incorporated many elements of Oct. 7 remembrance, including a vigil, into her Conservative synagogue’s High Holiday and Sukkot services, on Simchat Torah, she wants her congregation to also embrace the kind of joy and resilience that has kept the Jewish people going even during the darkest times.
“Like our extended family in Israel — and for some of us, our nearest and dearest — we will dance again.”