29 Oct SIMCHAS TORAH ONE YEAR LATER: A DAY OF DEATH, AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REBIRTH

Simchas Torah, October
7, will forever be etched
in our hearts and minds
as the day of the greatest
massacre of our people
since the Holocaust.
The brutal, cold-blooded
murder of innocent men,
women and children, young and old, entire
families, over 1,200 people, rocked our
worlds, broke our hearts, and shattered our
collective illusion of safety. The events of that
day launched a war in which our people have
sustained even more casualties, more parents
bereft of children, children orphaned from
parents. For over a year, we have been a
nation in a perpetual state of grief, mourning,
and sorrow.
Any look back at a year ago, and all the days
since then, begins with honoring the memory
of the fallen, learning each of their unique and
individual stories, gaining an appreciation for
who and what was taken from us. Simchas
Torah, heretofore one of the happiest and most
joyful days on our calendar, is now forever
complicated by the competing feelings of
sadness and loss.
Additionally, beyond the unimaginable loss
of life, on Simchas Torah a year ago, many of
our ideas and assumptions died as well. We
lost more than 1,200 irreplaceable lives, but
we also lost our innocence, in some cases our
confidence, our optimistic view of the Jewish
condition in America and the world, and for
some, communities of association or
identification. A year ago, so much died.
But a year later, as we reflect, we can look
back and see that on Simchas Torah, October
7 of last year, so much was also born. On the
brink of a civil war over judicial reform and
religious differences, overnight a sense of
unity, togetherness, and shared destiny was
reborn.
From the resolve of the devastated
communities on the Gaza border, driven by
displaced families from the north and the
south, powered by a record response to the
IDF call up, the Am HaNetzach, the
determined, tenacious nation of eternity was
reborn. From the ashes of the Gaza
communities, an unprecedented chesed effort
to provide for chayalim, support families of
reservists, comfort mourners, visit displaced
families and provide provisions was born,
with leadership and participation from diverse
communities literally around the world.
A spiritual awakening, a Jewish pride burst
forth in people who had never experienced
their Jewish soul before or in whom it had
been dormant for a long time. Throughout
this year, I have regularly been “bageled,”
approached by Jews simply signaling their
Jewishness to a fellow Jew (and signaling
their desire to signal that Jewishness) in
airports and on airplanes, in supermarkets and
at stores, at a baseball game and even in a
bathroom. Jews are returning to study,
practice, proudly display their identity The
Jewish people are alive, reborn, proud,
practicing, growing and united.

To be sure, things are far from perfect. There
are important differences and disagreements
and there are forces seeking to divide us again.
The war continues to rage, our heroic soldiers
are still fighting on multiple fronts, and our
precious hostages are still not home.
But with all the problems and challenges,
with all the lives that were prematurely and
tragically snuffed out, so much has come
alive. Moshe Naaman, a soldier in the IDF,
wrote the following inspiring story (Translated
from Hebrew):
Two weeks ago, we were called up by Order
8 to the northern border. Today, we had the
privilege of holding Yom Kippur prayers at
Kibbutz Beit Zera. For 93 years, the kibbutz
existed without agreeing to have a Yom
Kippur minyan. But we, as soldiers, set one up
in the company area at the kibbutz.
There were 12 religious soldiers among us.
We sent a casual WhatsApp invitation to the
kibbutz members. When the holiday started,
we were shocked—dozens of members came
for Kol Nidrei and Maariv. In the morning,
elderly members came for Yizkor. The climax
came with many dozens of people, including
children, women, and toddlers, arriving for
Neilah and shofar. People were moved to
tears.
What can I say? I never imagined this would
happen. The verse “Master of Wars, Sower of
Righteousness” took on a new meaning for me
today. Two weeks ago, I never imagined I
wouldn’t be in the beit midrash for the High
Holidays. I found myself as the shofar blower,
gabbai, cantor, and speaker… The members
kept thanking us after Yom Kippur and
tearfully asked us to return next year…
Last year, I had tears of pain and sorrow at the
end of Yom Kippur, but this year, those tears
turned into excitement and joy.
“And seal all Your people for a good life.”
גדוד הבוקע 5035 – Naaman Moshe
To mark the year since October 7, Danny
Wise of Ami Magazine conducted 38
interviews focusing on the rebuilding efforts
of the Israeli communities in the Gaza
envelope. Among his interviews, he met with
a woman named Dafnah from Kibbuz Re’im.
She had been the cultural director of the
kibbutz and was one of the organizers of the
Nova Festival.
Touring the kibbutz, she showed him her
charred house and the room in which her
mother and children, Shira and Meir, were
found murdered together. She is the lone
survivor of her family. Wise writes that
throughout the conversation he thought of
Kristallnacht and the destroyed shuls. He
asked her if the terrorists destroyed any shuls
in the communities along the Gaza envelope.
Dafnah responded, “Of course not. Not a
single beit knesset was damaged in all 21
Gaza kibbutzim.” Wise didn’t understand,
how could no shul have been attacked, no
Sefer Torah burned? She explained, “It wasn’t
a miracle. How could they damage something
that doesn’t exist?” Most of the communities
didn’t have designated or active shuls.
Dafnah, went on to explain, “If you want to

understand the day after, you have to
understand the day before.”
Wise writes:
Rabbi Shlomo Raanan runs an organization
called Ayelet Hashachar which seeks to bring
outreach to irreligious kibbutzim. He came up
with the idea of a basketball game between
yeshivah bachuram and the kibbutzniks of
Reim. The game was set to take place on Chol
Hamoed, October 2, just days before the
massacre. Dafnah had led the charge to cancel
the game. To her, the match wasn’t just a
friendly contest; it was a Trojan horse, a way
for religious influence to creep into the
kibbutz. “I was furious,” she told me. “This
was outrageous. We didn’t need outsiders
telling us who a good Jew is,” she said, pulling
out her phone and scrolling through old
messages. She showed me the texts she had
sent to Rabbi Raanan, warning him not to
bring his religious mission to her doorstep.
“Cancel this game immediately,” she wrote.
“If you don’t, we’ll all block the entrance with
our bodies.” In the spirit of peace, Rabbi
Raanan canceled the game.
But five days later, the massacre came. Just
over the border, in the tunnels of Gaza, Dafna
found herself held hostage, face to face with
the forces that had torn her world apart. “I said
to an older guard in Arabic, why do you torture
me? For 20 years, I’ve made programs for
Arab and Jewish. The Jews are your cousins.”
As she pleaded in the darkness for some
recognition of their shared humanity, she was
met not with empathy but with a cold
dismissal.
“You are not a descendent of Ibrahim! You
are not a Jew!” he spat. “You are a European
colonialist who stole our land! It was in that
moment, Dafnah said, that something broke.
Or perhaps, something began to be repaired.
The accusation hit hard. Like many in the
kibbutz movement, Dafnah had spent her life
defining herself more as an Israeli than a Jew,
and more dedicated to reconciling Arabs and
Israelis than healing the divides between
different groups of Jews.
Religion had always been secondary to her
identity. But now, in the depths of that tunnel,
being denied her Jewishness by a Hamas
fighter, she experienced a crisis of self. “I
started screaming, Ana Yahudiun, Ana
Yahudiun, I am a Jew I am a Jew!” The guards
restrained her, taping her mouth. But for
Dafnah, the internal shift had already occurred.
“For the first time in my life I saw my soul; I
saw that I am a Jew. “All my life,” Dafnah
reflected, “I’ve been part of this community.
We didn’t see ourselves as Jews, in the
traditional sense. When I traveled overseas
and someone asked if I was Jewish, I’d correct
them. “No, I’m Israeli”; I’d say.
But when he called me a colonialist, it hit me.
He didn’t see me as a Jew because I didn’t see
myself as a Jew.
Dafnah paused for a moment, her eyes
wandering over the ruined landscape. “Every
Arab village has a mosque. Christian
settlements build churches. And here, we have
nothing. Nothing to say that we are Jews. And

in that moment, realized that if we were going
to rebuild, we needed to reclaim our identity.”
“I will tell you,” Dafnah said, “I took upon
myself the new beit knesset project. When we
rebuild, our beit knesset will be the most
beautiful structure on the kibbutz.”
On Simchas Torah, Dafnah lost her family,
but she found herself. They died, but her
Jewish identity was born.
The holiday and festivities of Simchas Torah
are unusual in their origins. They are not
mentioned in the Torah or in the Talmud. It
was never enacted as a full rabbinic holiday
like Purim or Chanukah. Rabbi Lord Jonathan
Sacks z”l writes:
On Simchas Torah, without being commanded
by any verse in the Torah or any decree of the
Rabbis, Jews throughout the world sang and
danced and recited poems in honor of the
Torah, exactly as if they were dancing in the
courtyard of the Temple at the Simchas Beis
HaSho’evah, or as if they were King Dovid
bringing the Ark to Jerusalem. They were
determined to show God, and the world, that
they could still be ach same’ach, as the Torah
said about Succos: wholly, totally, given over
to joy. It would be hard to find a parallel in the
entire history of the human spirit of a people
capable of such joy at a time when they were
being massacred in the name of the God of
love and compassion.
A people that can walk through the valley of
the shadow of death and still rejoice is a
people that cannot be defeated by any force or
any fear…Simchas Torah was born when
Jews hadlost everything else, but they never
lost their capacity to rejoice. Nechemiah was
right when he said to the people weeping as
they listened to the Torah, realizing how far
they had drifted from it: “Do not grieve, for
the joy of the Lord is your strength”
(Nechemiah 8:10). A people whose capacity
for joy cannot be destroyed is itself
indestructible.
The year since Simchas Torah has been a
fulfillment of the saying, “They Tried to Bury
Us; They Did Not Know We Were Seeds.”
Simchas Torah was born against a backdrop of
hate and tragedy. A year ago, we lost so many,
we buried heroes of our people. But over this
year, we birthed a new era, a new chapter for
our people. It is still being written and we
determine what it will say next.
The world has changed enormously since
Simchas Torah of last year, have you? How
can we honor all those who died? On a day
marked by so much death, the only proper
response is to birth a better version of
ourselves and our people.