One year ago, Jews around the world welcomed the Hebrew calendar year of 5784, reflected on their actions and sins, and wished for a sweet year over apple slices draped with honey.
Instead came a brutal attack by Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist group, on Jews and non-Jews alike in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The new year turned from sweetness to ash as 1,200 people were murdered and another 250 taken hostage, sparking war, further destruction, and skyrocketing antisemitism.
Now, on the cusp of the new Jewish year of 5785, again come the high holidays and wishes for a sweet year.
But they also mark the one year anniversary of Oct. 7 and the exhausting, persistent reality that followed Hamas’ attack – now mixed with new anxiety over the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the terrorist group in Lebanon.
For clergy, tending to the anxious and frazzled Jewish community, the upcoming high holidays bring a variety of challenges: How to preserve the spirit of the holidays, and the joy they are supposed to provide, while commemorating horrors and giving Jews room to grieve?
“We say as clergy that our job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted when we preach and when we teach – and this year, I imagine that it is far more our job to comfort our people,” said Rabbi Meredith Kahan, senior rabbi of the K.K. Bene Israel Rockdale Temple.
“I’m sure that that some congregants are going to feel afflicted at points, because we are going to challenge them, and we’re not all going to agree on every point made – every teaching, every liturgical choice, every musical choice – and at the same time, I think this is a year for comfort and resilience and hope.”
Rabbis have a spiritual needle to thread carefully. The Oct. 7 attack has two anniversaries: On the secular date, the Cincinnati Jewish community will gather at an event to mourn together.
But the Hebrew calendar anniversary of Oct. 7 is on the joint holiday of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah – considered to be among the most joyful Jewish holidays. Simchat Torah literally means “joy of Torah,” when congregations dance with and celebrate the scrolls at the heart of Jewish life.
This year’s difficult mix of joy and mourning is a familiar one to Jewish tradition. In Jewish history, plenty of dark moments and anniversaries have coincided with holidays.
“There’s a lot hanging over us, and I think the Jewish value has always been to say, we live in a very tenuous space, and we try to find the good in that space, and celebrate it where we can,” said Rabbi Noah Ferro, senior rabbi at Northern Hills Synagogue.
“I don’t think we can give ourselves over entirely to rejoice in the way that we might want to, but we found ways to celebrate Purim this past year, and we’ll find ways to celebrate Simchat Torah,” he said.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, arrives in barely a week on Oct. 2, with Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, on Oct. 11. The festival of Sukkot begins on Oct. 16, with Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah on Oct. 23 and 24.
Jewish holidays start in the evening after the sun sets.
Congregations adjust ritual, lean into Yom Kippur
One way that congregation Sha’arei Torah will be commemorating Oct. 7 is through a new cover for one of its Torah scrolls, dedicated in memory of Nadav Issachar Farhi, an Israeli soldier killed in Gaza.
The cover is part of The Simchat Torah Project, run by the religious Zionist organization World Mizrachi. Congregations can register for a Torah cover memorializing one of the victims of Oct. 7 or Israelis who have been killed since in the Israel-Hamas war.
The covers are inscribed with a verse from Kohelet, or Ecclesiastes, that says, “There is a time for everything under the Heavens…a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
The verse calls to mind the slogan “We will dance again,” taken up by Jews around the world in memory of those murdered at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7.
Nadav Issachar Farhi is “somebody who we’ve taken on generally to just have a bit more in mind than usual,” said Sha’arei Torah’s Rabbi Ezra Goldschmiedt.
“We have a picture of him in our shul lobby, I’ve spoken to his parents about what kind of person he was,” Goldschmiedt said. “He’s a way in which we can connect to what was lost on the whole by focusing on one individual. And then, in our minds, to multiply that by the amount of casualties that there have been.”
Other high holiday additions include continuing to recite prayers for the hostages held by Hamas – like singing Acheinu, which has become a rallying song for American Jews – and reading tehillim, or psalms, for Israelis.
Much of the commemoration of Oct. 7 during the high holidays will be focused on Yom Kippur.
The Yom Kippur service includes Eleh Ezkereh, or the martyrology, which commemorates rabbis killed by the Romans for their Jewish practice, and the Yizkor, or memorial service, honoring the dead.
Those rituals have grown to commemorate Jewish mass murder in events like pogroms and the Holocaust – and now, Oct. 7.
“Yom Kippur is actually built, unfortunately, to commemorate and observe a sad anniversary such as this in the Jewish experience,” Kahan said. “We’re all going to need to mourn, and we’re all going to need to think about [Oct. 7] and remember, and we’re all going to need comfort and strength around that anniversary.”
The holiday, focused on introspection and teshuvah (often translated as repentance or return) is also an important way for individual Jews to reflect on the past year.
“We are mentally exhausted, we’re emotionally exhausted,” Goldschmiedt said.
That means it’s ok to “be a little bit more lenient with yourself on what needs to happen for teshuvah – not that we use it as an excuse…but to take it a little bit more easily on ourselves, because of how emotionally drained we are right now.”
But Goldschmiedt also told his congregation that a sense of purpose is important. Teshuva this year should be about a return to the family of the Jewish people.
“We need to be there for our fellow Jews to a greater degree than we have been in the past,” he said. “More and more Jews are looking for community, are looking for their Jewish lives to be invigorated, and they’re looking for support.”
Simchat Torah tension, meeting the moment
Looming over the high holidays is the strange position of the joint holiday of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, and how to balance memorializing Oct. 7 with some of the happiest holidays of the Jewish calendar.
Shemini Atzeret, at least, includes another repeat of the Yizkor service to commemorate the dead. But what about reconciling the joyful dancing of Simchat Torah with Oct. 7?
This struggle isn’t new. In the wake of Oct. 7, Israelis debated whether or not to call the Hamas attack, and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war, the Simchat Torah War – and how much weight generally to put on the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the attack.
That’s how the bloody 1973 Yom Kippur war was named, as Arab countries invaded Israel on that holiday. But to many, naming a war and terror attack after Simchat Torah felt inappropriate, and there’s been a conscious choice to stick to remembering the Hamas attack by its secular calendar date.
In the United States, it’s also the 2018 murder of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh on Shabbat that comes to mind. According to Jewish law, public acts of mourning are prohibited on holidays like Shabbat and Simchat Torah.
“The question [after the 2018 shooting] was whether we were going to observe the sort of yahrzeit [the death anniversary] on the Jewish calendar for the individuals who were killed, or whether we were going to mark it according to the secular date,” said Ferro, of Northern Hills Synagogue.
“That parallels this sort of tension for us” when it comes to Simchat Torah, he said. “We’re spiritually in one place, but physically in another, and physically feeling that sense of threat and of tiredness [while] spiritually trying to enter a time of renewal and fresh start.”
Figuring out how to navigate Simchat Torah is a work in progress, even in the last few days leading up to the start of the high holidays. Congregations are finalizing songs and services while trying to fulfill the need of congregants. Rockdale Temple and Valley Temple, for example, will be bringing in Jewish musician Dan Nichols to help with services.
“In some ways, we’re still figuring out exactly what we’re going to do,” Ferro said. “I don’t know that we have the music right now that would feel right for us.”
Another challenge in commemorating Oct. 7 is focusing on Jewish and Israeli pain over Hamas’ brutal attack and the ensuing war, while recognizing the destruction that Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have also experienced in the past year because of the war.
“I think that our Judaism and our values allow us to do both things,” Kahan said. “They’re not an equal balance. They don’t need to be, because in Jewish moments and in Jewish spaces, we can center Jewish experience and Jewish pain. And that’s our job, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t make space for the suffering of others at the same time.”
Clergy are also focused, with perhaps a higher intensity for this high holiday season, on community, and bringing Jews together for the new year.
“It’s certainly a time to emphasize unity – that was, I think, a very powerful force post October 7, [though] it’s starting to fray a bit,” said Goldschmiedt. “This year we know there’s an even greater need for unity…despite all disagreements, it’s a time to come together.”
