Last year’s disastrous Hamas attack on October 7 coincided with the morning of Simchat Torah in Israel. Many religious Israelis cannot imagine celebrating as usual this year on Simchat Torah. Others feel that the best way to proclaim to the world that Am Yisrael Chai is to celebrate Simchat Torah as we have always celebrated it. In what follows, I try to provide some backing to each of these two Simchat Torah “positions.”
The position that argues for a significantly different Simchat Torah begins with our relationship with God and says (this, from Rabbanit Sara Friedland Ben Arza): “An honest stance before God on this day this year demands that we bring to our prayers and to the Simchat Torah hakafot (circuits) the rupture and the blood that still flow in body and soul of those in our communities, those who were exiled and those who remain in their places, in Israel and abroad, the cries of the hostages, the distress of the bereaved and the injured, and the sacrifices of the soldiers and their families.”
Rabbanit Ben Arza and Rabbi Ronen Lubitz (their remarks, as well as those by several others, appear in a pamphlet produced by an organization called Beit Hillel and widely distributed in the national-religious newspaper Makor Rishon) both point to the dual aspect of Simchat Torah as a festive day but also a solemn one. While the day does feature the joyous singing and dancing of the hakafot, the day also includes a Yizkor service for the dead, a reading from the end of the Pentateuch that describes the poignant death of Moses, and the Prayer for Rain—traditionally recited by a chazan wearing the white kittel and using melodies reminiscent of the Day of Judgment (Rosh Hashanah). According to Rabbi Lubitz and Rabbanit Ben Arza, therefore, their proposals for Simchat Torah this year are not something foreign to the day so much as a recalibration of the emotional weight of the day.
It is precisely the most joyous aspect of Simchat Torah, the hakafot, that demands special attention this year for many religious Israelis. Rabbi Amit Kula, the rabbi of Kibbutz Alumim, a Gazan border community, suggests dedicating each hakafa to a ravaged community and speaking about what happened to that specific community at the beginning of the hakafa. Rabbi Lubitz suggests dedicating each of the seven hakafot to a different Israeli sector related to the attack: the hostages, those who were killed (civilians and military), soldiers serving in the IDF, those who were injured, evacuees (both North and South), families of those serving, and all the volunteers. Rabbi Lubitz proposes starting each hakafa with a short prayer and certain scriptural verses on behalf of the dedicatees. Both he and Rabbanit Ben Arza suggest that the ensuing songs be of the more poignant rather than boisterous kind.
The position that says not to change the observance of Simchat Torah is very much cognizant of the fact that we live in a post-Holocaust world. It points out that the destruction of 6 million Jews did not leave a trace in Judaism’s traditional daily or weekly liturgy. Surely, if our liturgical experience is relational, if we are to have, as Rabbanit Ben Arza says, “an honest stance before God,” then the death of a third of our people would be permanently marked in our liturgy—if not every day, then every week. That we continue to pray the very same prayers which were left unanswered by so many of our people (blessing God three times each weekday for “hearing prayer”) is testimony not just to our enduring, unbreakable covenant with God but also testimony that we have absolutely no coherent idea as to the inner workings of God’s plan for the world. If we are able to set aside the Holocaust in our relationship with God, we can set aside Simchat Torah 2023.
As is usual in these matters, individual synagogues will adopt a Simchat Torah practice that is meaningful and appropriate for them, and individual Jews will do the same. I also imagine that there will be elements of commonality across all synagogues, such as adding a paragraph concerning the hostages during the part of the liturgy that offers up prayers for the community, and adding a paragraph to the Yizkor service for the October 7 victims. I also imagine that even in those synagogues that have “normal” hakafot, these may very well be shorter and less lively than during years gone by. Happy holiday.
