On the first day of Sukkot, my family was walking home from Synagogue past the Willow School. We overheard some kids remarking to each other, “Why are there so many people dressing like Abraham Lincoln today?” The next morning, Malkie was walking to the Synagogue with a few of our children. When they passed the Willow School, a little seven-year-old girl pressed her face against the fence and asked in a small voice, “Are you Jewish?” When Malkie replied, “Yes,” the little girl piped up and said, “I am Jewish too.” Malkie said, “Today is Sukkot, Happy Sukkot.” The little girl replied, “Ok, I am going to back to play with my friends.”
What prompts a seven-year-old to initiate a conversation with strangers through a fence and volunteer that information? I would argue that it was an expression of her core Jewish identity. She just wanted that connection in the moment in a way that she herself couldn’t really understand.
Two years ago, on the morning of Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah in Israel, a cruel assault was launched against the Jewish people and against Jewish identity. The terrorists and their useful idiot supporters who began protesting immediately, while legitimizing the attack against Jews, want to see Jewish identity wither away and disappear forever.
They chose the wrong day for an attempt at eliminating Jewish identity. Simchat Torah is, in fact, the day that a Jew’s identity is as potent and powerful as it can be. What we celebrate that day is our existence and our relationship with G-d. Coming on the heels of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, Simchat Torah is the climax of tapping into our core Jewish identity.
They tried to steal that holiday from us. They tried to turn the apex of joy into the depths of shock and mourning. But they cannot. Just as all the nations who tried before them for millennia. The last line in the saga reads, “Am Yisrael Chai - the Jewish people live on.”
As we look forward to the return of the last hostages, with G-d’s help, we prepare to celebrate our Jewish identity on Simchat Torah once again. What a celebration this will be. We celebrate the survival of the Jewish people against all odds. We celebrate the thriving of Jewish life. We celebrate the love and embrace that we feel from Hashem. We celebrate the imminent arrival of Mashiach and the complete and final Redemption.
Join us as we dance for them and with them. Am Yisrael Chai!
Happy Simchat Torah
Rabbi Mendel Rivkin
PS We express a heart Mazel Tov to Rabbi Mendel and Chaya Mushka Ceitlin and Rabbi Yossie and Chanie Nemes on the occasion of Heschel Ceitlin’s Bar Mitzvah.
We express heartfelt condolences to Dr. Tere Vives on the passing of her mother, Tere Aceves. May Hashem comfort her among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
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