A People Who Cry While Continuing To Dance

10/23/24

Tomorrow we celebrate Simchat Torah, the holiday when we complete the yearly reading of the Torah. It is a great day of celebration and, alongside Purim, is considered the most joyous day on the Jewish calendar.

But this year, Simchat Torah will also mark the first Yahrtzeit on the Hebrew calendar for the victims of the October 7th terror attacks—a day that will be etched in our minds forever.

I was in NY celebrating Simchat Torah last year on October 7th. In accordance with Halacha, I was completely offline for the holiday, with no access to news or social media.

But the devastating reports quickly trickled in from the synagogue caretakers and the NYPD officers who had come to provide extra security. We heard about the hundreds gunned down in fields, the families massacred in their homes, the hostages taken into Gaza, and that Israel had declared war.

At the Kiddush following services that morning, I was sitting next to a visiting Chabad rabbi from Israel whose son was in active service in the IDF. A well-known and usually stoic figure, he was sobbing uncontrollably. I’ll never forget those moments.

Simchat Torah is typically celebrated with the Hakafot ceremony, when we take the Torah scrolls out of the Ark and sing and dance through the night. But last year, as the Hakafot ceremony was about to begin, we were faced with a dilemma. A dilemma that was undoubtedly shared in shuls across the world.

Do we dance tonight as Jews have done every year for millennia, celebrating the great gift of the Torah? But how could we possibly dance as over a thousand of our brothers and sisters were mercilessly slaughtered and raped in fields and houses, and as Israel was fighting for its very survival? Perhaps instead we should cry.

I will never forget that night, as ultimately I danced the Hakafot with tears streaming down my face. That night, we danced while we cried. We sang as we sobbed. It was a powerful, almost otherworldly experience.

Looking back, I feel those moments encapsulated so much of the Jewish experience throughout our history.

Whether in Spain or Auschwitz, in Siberia or Be'eri, we are a people that have endured more persecution than any other, yet a people that never let our haters define us. We are a people who always survived our enemies only to emerge stronger than before.

A people who move forward as we mourn. A people who live on and persevere.

A people who cry while continuing to dance.