Simchat Torah This Year – עֵת סְפוֹד וְעֵת רְקוֹד
BY RABBI DORON PEREZ
This essay is an excerpt from “Days of Awe in Times of War” a newly published booklet by Rabbi Doron Perez. The booklets have been distributed together with HaMizrachi magazine.
To read a digital copy, click here.
This Simchat Torah, the last of the festivals of Tishrei, will be the hardest one that any of us have ever experienced. No festival will capture this duality of life more than this one.
On the one hand, we are celebrating – holding and dancing with the Torah, the source of our life and meaning. What are we as a people without the values of the Torah? It is impossible to understand the Jewish mission without the unique vision of life and light that Hashem has bestowed upon us through the Torah. We dance and celebrate this privilege in both the night and the day. As we complete the reading of the Torah and begin it at the very same time, the Torah encompasses us from beginning to end and we celebrate this privilege.
At the same time, this is the most painful Simchat Torah that any of us can ever remember. Perhaps amongst the most painful in our people’s history. There will be around 1,300 families across Israel mourning the loss of their beloved on this day. Some people lost multiple family members from different generations, brothers and sisters, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren. Many were butchered and tortured in the most barbaric way. Our son, Daniel, was shot at 9:01am while his head was out of the tank after he and his brave Tzevet Perez did all they could to save their fellow soldiers of the Nachal Oz base and the members of the adjacent kibbutz bearing the same name. At the time that we will hopefully be taking out the Torah this year and dancing in the morning of Simchat Torah, we will be thinking about what happened that exact moment precisely one year before.
How can we celebrate both the completion of the Torah and at the same time commemorate the pain of loss?
In general, and during our great festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Pesach in particular, celebrating both the birth of humanity and the birth of the Jewish people are built around the symbols of the shofar and the matzah – the celebration and crying, the suffering and salvation.
Life is somehow a package deal and we are called to draw upon superhuman strength when facing challenges. Ours is not a history littered only with great suffering but also punctuated with the greatest spiritual and moral moments in human history. We will need to draw on our deepest reservoirs of faith and strength to balance these strong conflicting emotions. Indeed, the Zohar calls the matzah of the month of Nissan and the sukkah of the month of Tishrei articles of faith: מֵיכְלָא דִּמְהֵימְנוּתָא and צִילָא דִּמְהֵימְנוּתָא.
In facing the enormous challenges ahead, we will need to dig very deep into the dual symbolism of the matzah and the shofar. Our ancestors faced at times impossible challenges, and every time they somehow managed to find a way to bounce back. The exodus from Egyptian slavery; miraculously breaking the stranglehold of Sancheriv [Sennacherib], the siege of Jerusalem which threatened the entire city; surviving the Temple’s destruction and ensuing exiles; rebuilding a sovereign Jewish state and the Torah world so soon after Auschwitz and returning to unite Jerusalem after the imminent threat of a second holocaust in 1967. Somehow each time we have bounced back and rebuilt the Jewish world. We cried and we sang, we ate the bread of suffering and salvation, we were exposed to the destructive elements of those who wished to destroy us, and we were protected by the divine clouds of glory. We always found a way.
When we somehow managed to get through the celebration of our son Yonatan’s wedding with his brother Daniel missing, only 10 days after that tragic day, I understood the dichotomy of suffering and celebration. It helped me understand something we had just read during Sukkot in the book of Kohelet [Ecclesiastes]. King Solomon, the wisest of all men, highlights in chapter 3 that for every time, and every hour beneath the sun, there are different experiences: a time of life and a time of death, a time to plant and a time to uproot, time of peace and a time of war, time to mourn and a time to celebrate. I had always previously understood that Solomon was talking about different times in our lives. Life can be divided into good times and bad times – sometimes it’s a time for happiness and growth. Sometimes, it’s a time for mourning and destruction. I understood for the first time in my life that this is not necessarily the case. Perhaps King Solomon, in his great wisdom, was teaching us that sometimes all of these things happen together. They literally happen at the same time. Life is a package deal.
More often than not, all of these things happen at the same time. Parts of our life are being planted and grown, and other parts are being uprooted and unraveled. In some parts of our lives, we have shalom, peace and harmony, and in others conflict, confrontation, and turmoil. We have so much blessing and so much to be grateful for, but at times so many curses and so many challenges.
Rabbi Doron Perez and Rabbi Andrew Shaw, Chief Executive of Mizrachi UK, holding one of the me’ilim that will be used this coming Simchat Torah, in memory of those who fell last Sןmchat Torah
At practically every wedding celebration there is also the pain of loss and hardship. Either a beloved close family member has passed away or perhaps there is debilitating or fatal illness being faced. Sometimes there are great challenges of shalom bayit and painful arguments tearing families apart. At the height of our happiness we need to put in the background these painful challenges to allow ourselves to appreciate the moment of gratitude and celebration. We are often called upon to juggle these contrasting experiences and emotions. This is what we had to do as a family at Yonatan’s wedding, and this is what many other families have had to do as they forge ahead a life with so much pain and loss. This is what our people is called upon to do time and time again.
Many hostages still need to return home. Our son needs to be buried. Many of us live with anxiety as our children are on the front lines. And many of us seek comfort. As we enter 5785 we know that this year ahead has many question marks. We face many challenges, not only in Gaza, but in the north, and in the east where the roots of the Iranian evil lurks.
This Simchat Torah, we are going to have it both ways. We will dance with every fiber of our being, celebrating the privilege of being a Jew and at the same time, we will cry, yearn, and feel the pain of this last year and what happened last year at this time.
עֵת סְפוֹד וְעֵת רְקוֹד – it will be both a time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to feel the pain and a time to celebrate the privilege. A time to laugh and a time to cry. A time to feel close and a time to yearn from a distance.
We live in Hashem’s world. In Hashem’s world somehow things are always okay, even when they are not.
Rabbi Doron Perez is the Executive Chairman of World Mizrachi.