The third Simchat Torah

This week, we head into the last part of the monthlong holidays that began with Rosh Hashanah, and for many of us started a month earlier with the beginning of Elul, back in late August.

For the third time, Simchat Torah will be different. The holiday with joy in its name will be freighted with grief and rage.

In 2023, we in this country had just heard about the barbarism Hamas inflicted on Israel. We were in shock, and we hadn’t yet grasped the enormity of the evil. We didn’t really know much about the hostages. Everything that we knew still was blood red.

Last year, we knew. It seemed that the war was dragging on, and much of the world already had used what it saw in Gaza to target, demonize, and at times physically attack Israelis, and sometimes all Jews, because why not? Some of the hostages had been released, and others were being held for what struck us as a nearly unendurably long time. Their families and supporters militated for their release.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, perhaps the best known of the hostages, who had preternaturally articulate parents, had been murdered, shot to death, along with five others, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lobanov, and Ori Danino, about a month before Simchat Torah. Their memories were fresh on that theoretically joyous day.

This year, Simchat Torah marks the beginning of the remaining hostages’ third year in imprisonment.

That doesn’t mean that we give up on the idea of joy. There is always beauty in the world. And there are ways to fight despair.

This week’s paper has stories of heroism. We write about Hannah Senesh. Yes, she died at 23 — her death, not accidental but the result of brutal, sadistic hatred — was terrible. I know that I would never have been able to do what she did — most likely most of you couldn’t either — and I am grateful never to have to find out. But her courage, her willingness to sacrifice herself for her family and her people, is breathtaking.

And then there is the story of Rachel Simons’ family — also inspiring, also the result of courage and risk-taking, but maybe a little more possible to identify with. Her great grandparents and grandparents and parents kept moving, remaking their lives, retaining their Jewish identities, going forward not only pushed by circumstances but also pulled by possibilities.

Maybe this year will be like that for us. Maybe the living hostages will come home and the dead ones will be buried with love. Maybe the war will end and the hatred will die down and the world’s beauty will make itself clear.

Cain yehi ratzon.

—JP