As the news comes at us fast and furious, I take a look at our synagogue community calendar and the schedule of services prepared for last year.
Friday evening: hakafot for Simḥat Torah. Shabbat morning: shaḥarit, hakafot, the honors of Ḥatan Torah and Kallat Bereishit.
A picture: children dance in a circle at the synagogue. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but it was joyous. I look at the outline for shaḥarit that never took place. We did not complete the Torah reading cycle of 5783. That circle remains incomplete, its ends frayed. In my heart, too, the Torah of 5783 is incomplete, and its counterpart that we are about to seal off in a few days started out on the wrong foot.
I hope that this year will have Simḥat Torah. What joy is that Simḥat Torah? We have just completed a year of shared national mourning, and almost every day another such year begins for another family. I am reminded of the Jews who saw foxes on the destroyed Temple Mount, Jews who had survived the great destruction. Were they ever privileged to have joy in their hearts during their lives afterward?
It seems to me that this year will not bring full and complete joy to any Jew who has a heart. There will not be a Temple of joy in our hearts, but only moments of restrained joy.
Our children and young people deserve for us to try to create some Simḥat Torah this year. Even if we all come to synagogue with hearts that are broken and scarred, with joy that is hard to arouse. They, the youngsters, deserve it. Too much has been taken from them this year; they deserve our granting them memories of rejoicing on Simḥat Torah.
May we all seek out the simḥah of Torah in our hearts, find it, and share it with others.
