We Begin Again: Dancing this Simchat Torah

As we stand on the cusp of the next sacred days — these beautiful, complicated days of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah — we hold within us a truth that cannot be diminished: We are still here. Even in the midst of unimaginable loss, we continue. Look at us — look at the beauty and strength that we embody.

I was in Israel this past August with the UJA staff. Some of us were there for the very first time. And while Israel has changed, while the world feels heavy, Israel remains Israel. It was exquisite. It was real. It was magic. We go, we return, we begin again. I remember our tour guard reassuring the first-timers, “You don’t need to worry unless you see me running to miluim (reserves).” Just today, he sent us a message from Lebanon, after serving a month on the front lines, saying, “I’m coming home after a long month. I told you not to worry. Haha.”

This is who we are. This is our strength — Jewish, Druze, Arab, Christian — those who defend Israel, our homeland. We remain resilient, we remain strong. And even as we face countless fronts, we still laugh, we still hope, we still live.

Friends, this week we begin the Torah again. It is Simchat Torah — OUR Simchat Torah — a joy no one can take from us. We end the Torah with the sadness of Moses’ final words, and in the very next breath, we open a Torah scroll to read from the beginning once more. “In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth.” Not “In the beginning God created,” as it is often mistranslated, but “in the beginning of God’s creating, the Earth was formless and void” — the ongoing process of making order from chaos. God didn’t start with perfection; God started with a vast mess, and from that, created order and life.

We, too, have inherited a mess. Every year, we are tasked with making life from it. This year, even more so. And we have within us the divine power to create beauty out of chaos. This is why we fight — not just to survive, but to live beautifully. It is our right to live in joy, even amidst the mess.

Simchat Torah reminds us that this has always been our story — the joy, the complexity, the sacred mess of life. As Rabbi Irwin Kula taught in his book Yearnings, life is a sacred mess, and it is our task to navigate it. We don’t always need to know where the mess came from. The Jewish response is simple: “There’s a mess? Let’s get to work.”

And while we work, we must also dance. Dance with joy, dance with sorrow, dance with hope. We have learned from the survivors of Nova what it means to be heroic enough to dance again. Even when our hearts tremble, we must dance. We cannot sacrifice our own joy, for it is through joy that we find the strength to fight for those who are still not home, for the generations to come.

So, let’s dance. For ourselves, for those who cannot, and for the Divine. Let’s dance, because everything is possible again. That’s how we win. On this 382nd day since October 7th, 2023, let’s send our hearts, our strength, and our hope out into the world.

We begin again. And again. And again.