This Simchas Torah, We Will Celebrate Our Nation’s Resilience 

On Simchas Torah, we’ll mark the pain in the same way our nation has for thousands of years. We’ll dance with the Torah that gave our people the strength to stand strong through millennia of trials. We won’t forget the pain, but we will celebrate the reason for our resilience.

By Mrs. Bruria Efune

On Simchas Torah last year, I sat with my family in the bomb shelter, slowly realizing that a war had broken out. We didn’t yet know what was going on, but wondered if it would be called the “Simchas Torah War.”

Between sirens, we innocently danced around our dining room table—my husband, children, and I. We held up Torah books and took turns reading, “ata horeisa..” determined to have our Simchas Torah, wherever it would be.

Later, as we learned what had happened, and the pain and grief overwhelmed us, I wondered if Simchas Torah would now be ruined forever.

Some of my best childhood memories are from Simchas Torah. All the joy of Sukkos was just a buildup to the party with the Torah that would take place on the eighth day. Hashem gave us a treasure, and we Jews sure knew how to celebrate it.

There was joyous singing, dancing around in chaotic circles, rabbis doing cartwheels, and candy everywhere.

Experienced kids would come with a bag to collect all their candy in, and inevitably some trading would go on for the best stuff. The lesser candies, like Sunkists, which came in abundance, would be used for the best version of the toss game: Try to throw it from the women’s section into a dancing chassid’s hat. Extra points if you can actually knock a man’s hat off.

The more daring kids would try some pranks during prayers. One year, two heroic boys crawled under the tables and rearranged some men’s shoelaces—tying them each to their neighbor. When they stood up, hilarity ensued. Or, at least it was hilarious for us kids watching from the back of the hall.

The dancing would go on and on until late at night, way past our bedtimes, and then again the next day, for hours on end. My father would tell us how Hashem treasured the bits of broken shoe on the floor. The worn out shoes and messy synagogue was all a sign of our overwhelming love for His Torah which filled us with a joy that can’t be contained or described in human words—only dances, around and around the synagogue hall.

Last year I became afraid that that day of joy was taken away from us. That the terrorists replaced it all with memories of death.

But nobody called it the Simchas Torah War for long. Soon it just became “October 7th.” A day on a different calendar that goes by the sun rather than the moon. October 7th took the dark and cruel day as its own.

A year passed, October 7th came. All the brokenness and pain screamed, and the day, or week really, was spent in mourning.

I thought good, now we can do Simchas Torah like normal. Like nothing ever happened on that day.

But the closer the day comes, the more I know that not to be true. Simchas Torah is changed forever. It will never be simple again.

On this day, 1,200 holy neshamos were reunited with their creator, and thousands more stayed down here, with wounds too big to close.

On the same day, our nation stood up and decided that we will continue to exist, and will fight for our future.

Our tiny nation stood up against seven fronts, all determined to erase us from the map. Still bleeding from the first day, and with little support from around the world, we chose to battle the storm.

We mourned on October 7th—but on Simchas Torah we’ll mark the pain in the same way our nation has for thousands of years. We’ll dance with the Torah that gave our people the strength to stand strong through millennia of trials. Well won’t forget the pain, but we will celebrate the reason for our resilience. We will thank Hashem for the gift of eternity.

Our sages taught that those who are killed for being a Jew, and those who are killed while guarding over the Land of Israel, go straight to the highest place in Heaven. And that in shomayim, on every Yahrzeit of a person’s passing, their neshama ascends even higher.

This Simchas Torah, while we dance around and around, there will be another dance, in the highest of highs, dancing right along with us. And I like to imagine that the little children stolen from their homes will be there too; gleefully throwing candies down, and giggling when a soldier looks up, wondering what that G-dly tap on his helmet could’ve been from.