Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

How to celebrate Simchat Torah when our hearts are weighed down by grief

(JTA) - How are we supposed to celebrate Simchat Torah this year with a full heart?

The very name of this holiday - "the joy of the Torah," celebrating the completion of the annual Torah cycle - connotes an emotion we cannot fully inhabit on the anniversary on the Hebrew calendar of Hamas's brutal attack on Israel.

I vividly remember standing in shul last year, wondering how we might celebrate with the Torah as the news trickled in. The rabbi kept updating us with the news of more and more dead, even as we sang the same celebratory songs of the holiday. Though we didn't know the full extent of...

 

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