Dear CBAJ Family,
It is hard to believe that in just one day, we will be commencing Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, one year on the Hebrew calendar, the yahrzeit, the hilula, since 1,200 Israelis were murdered, more than 250 were taken hostage, and many more were injured, amidst unspeakable acts of horror, on the most brutal and deadly attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and the deadliest day in the history of the State of Israel.
These events have of course turned many of our lives upside down, uprooted tens of thousands of Israelis, shocked nearly everyone in Israel and Jews throughout the diaspora and much of the Western world to its core, and changed the way we view our own position in the diaspora countries we have long called home.
And most shocking of all, the aftermath is still ongoing, with Israel experiencing daily attacks from its neighbors and with 100 Israelis still being held hostage.
Simchat Torah this year therefore places us in a difficult quandary: How do we celebrate one of our joyous holidays while also commemorating, as we must, the yahrzeit of the deaths of 1,200 Israelis and the launching of so much suffering for Israelis, and in a different way, to Jews around the world?
I wish that I had the perfect answer to this difficult question, and I fear that it is one that we will grapple with for the rest of our lives.
In particular, my heart aches for those who have experienced the pain of this war most directly: how those who lost their loved ones on this day can celebrate what is our Jewish holiday celebrating the conclusion of the Yamim Noraim season and the completion and restarting of the Torah, knowing that it is also the day on which their parent, sibling, child, friend, spouse, or relative was brutally cut down?
While I will not present an "answer," I will say that this year at CBAJ, we will lovingly and longingly remember, memorialize, and honor those we have lost in various ways, AND we will joyously celebrate the renewal of our cycle of reading the Torah.
We will not forget those we have lost, and we will not forget the joy that defines being Jewish and living lives of Torah and mitzvot. We will, in the words of Mizrachi, "dance through tears," as difficult as this contradiction may be.
We also must not forget that while this is the balance that CBAJ is choosing, we also must respect and honor that each individual and each family, especially those most directly impacted, will want to celebrate and remember differently. We must create space for everyone in our community, along with the range of emotions that people will feel.
On behalf of CBAJ, I wish you a joyous, meaningful, and restful Shemini Atzeret, Simchat Torah, and Shabbat, and a year of comfort, of healing, and of abundant blessing.
Rabbi Ben Kean
