To most of the world, the date is the October 7. To me it will always be Simchat Torah.
The memory of the juxtaposition of the joyful singing and dancing coming from the shul next door with the messages starting to come through on the MDA and HATZALAH communication devices in my daughter’s house still haunts me. At first there was an urgent request for all ambulance drivers to report to the MDA headquarters to pick up an ambulance and drive south. Then came the request for blood donations of all types.
As observant Jews those devices were the only communication we had with the outside world. We were still had no idea what had happened but it was obviously something deadly serious.
Now a year later the horror is still with us all. Over 100 hostages are still in Gaza, and thousands and thousands of Israelis are still homeless living under the constant threat of attack from multiple fronts.
A few days before Simchat Torah, on Sukkot, we read Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) and never have the words held so much meaning to the Jewish people.
As the author of this book, King Solomon, said (and for those who aren’t familiar with Ecclesiastes but find the words familiar they were ‘immortalized’ in the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” by The Byrds)
Everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heaven.
A time to kill and a time to heal: How we long for the time to kill to be over so that we have a chance to heal.
As Golda Meir said: ‘We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”.
A time to break and a time to build: Even as we are forced to continue to defend ourselves by attacking those who come to kill us we are also rebuilding the many homes that were burned to the ground last year in the south and destroyed by missiles over the last year in the north.
A time to weep and a time to laugh: The last year brought so much weeping to thousands of families and yet their resilience in the face of their loss and pain has inspired us all. As Rachel, the mother of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin who had campaigned day and night for his release, said at his funeral, “…finally, my sweet sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally you are FREE!’
A time to be silent and a time to speak: Most of the world has been screaming antisemitic and anti-Israeli slogans since Oct. 7 with only a few brave countries and individuals speaking out in our favor. The time has come for the silence to end. As a 19th-century politician once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
A time for war and a time for peace: Who would have dreamt that one year later we would still be at war, a war that has developed into a multi-front conflict including Iran and Yemen, fronts that are thousands of kilometers away from us. Our husbands, brothers, sons are torn away from their families, from their homes. from their work, from their studies and many from life itself.
All we want is to live in security. To go to sleep in our beds and not in the bomb shelter; to listen out for birds and not sirens and incoming missiles; to have all the hostages returned to their families and the soldiers come back home.
We long to be able to say the words that introduce the Rosh Hashanah service
תכלה שנה וקללותיה, תחל שנה וברכותיה
Tichle shana ve’klaloteha, tachel shana ve’birchoteha
May the year and its curses end – and the new year and its blessings begin.
