Today, 1,200 families are honoring the memories of their loved ones that were brutally massacred last year on Simchat Torah. Last year, the holiday fell on October 7. This year, October 24.
Simchat Torah. Simchat in Hebrew means happy or joy. The Torah are the original 5 books of Moses. Christians call it "The Old Testament". It's the day in the Hebrew calendar when we finish reading the end of the book (scroll), rewind, and start all over again. Back to creation, because in the beginning Gd created the Heavens and the Earth. Gd then separated light and darkness, made plants, animals, and finally humankind before resting on the Sabbath. Generally synagogues are bursting with song, dance, and great joy. Sweets are given out to children and the community gets together to celebrate this annual huge occasion.
Jewish holidays begin at sundown and end at sundown. The main celebration of Simchat Torah happens at night. Last year, that would have been October 6. So after a night of dancing, celebrating, and joy ... in the quiet hours of the early morning the Jewish people woke up to immense darkness.
I remember sitting in my living room on a lazy Saturday (Shabbat) morning watching movies and scrolling on my phone when I saw it. The first report that something was happening in Southern Israel, near Gaza. It was different this time as the posts across news outlets and social media grew in intensity and horror. I clutched my phone. My body tensed. What were we witnessing? The worst possible atrocity of our time unfolding before our eyes.
Then the reports starting rolling in about hostages being taken and the death toll numbers starting jumping by the hundreds. It took weeks and months to sort through the wreckage. To identify the bodies. To contact the families. To hold funerals.
1,200 families are mouring the loss of their loved ones today and in the coming days.
101 families still have a loved one in captivity.
Some of those hostages have died and their bodies are being held. In our tradition, official mourning only begins once the body is buried. So some of those families have been doomed to wait in limbo. Mourning, but not officially. More than a year of limbo.
There are still two children being held. Baby Kfir (1) who was only 8 months old when taken last year. His big brother Ariel (5) who was 4 years old at the time of his kidnapping. Videos of them being held in their mother, Shiri's arms and being wisked away are forever burned in my memory. Their father Yarden was also taken, but separately from his family. A released hostage reported that they once saw Yarden in the tunnels under Gaza...locked in a cage. There have been no reports about Shiri or their boys Kfir and Ariel.
There are still 13 women (mothers and daughters) in captivity with reported accounts of them being raped, sold as servants, or even dressed up like dolls.
There is a Holocaust survivor, Shlomo Mansour (86), who survived the Farhud in Iraq, being held somewhere in Gaza.
Sons. So many sons are not even in the rounds of discussions. Regular, healthy young men (both soldiers and civilians) being starved, humiliated and tortured.
The war continues on 7 different fronts; Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemin, Iraq, Syria, Hamas in the West Bank, and the Islamic Republic in Iran.
Yet here I sit, on another Simchat Torah morning... In the quiet. Blue skies and birds chirping on a clear, crispy fall morning.
Praying for better days.
One love. ✌🏼🕊️
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