It shatters me every time I think about the fact that Hamas launched its massacre on Simchat Torah. Obviously, it’s impossible to fathom the barbarism happening at any time. But it’s extra harrowing that the slaughtering occurred on the annual celebration of the Jewish story. 

As we approach the first painful anniversary, I’m revisiting what I learned in 2017 about Simchat Torah, during research for My Jewish Year, my book that dove deep into the Jewish calendar. 

Simchat Torah—literally, “joy of the Torah”—is essentially a party for the seminal narrative of our people, not to mention civilization. It marks the completion of the last chapter of Deuteronomy and the start of the first chapter of Genesis. There is powerful symbolism in reading the first book as soon as we finish the last: beginning again, uninterrupted continuation, a rejoicing in the retelling. 

But on October 7, 2023, instead of a restart, there was a standstill. Instead of continuation, there was termination. Instead of celebration, lamentation. For the inconsolable families whose loved ones were murdered or abducted, the story stopped. 

And yet, the Jewish people have never let the enemy author our last chapter. Torah is its own propellant and engine. We always proceed.  

This holiday will now, undoubtedly, forever be embedded as a ritual of defiance. We return to Genesis no matter what: “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness”  (Genesis 1:3-4).

Let there be light.” I can’t think of a declaration more intrepid or poignant for this anniversary. No matter how viciously anyone tries to sever the Jewish story, we keep writing it.

“God separated the light from the darkness.” That has been our sacred task every day since October 7 last year, trying to find some optimism amid the anguish. So many people have mirrored God’s action—by volunteering, donating, supporting those who have lost family and those fighting for Israel’s survival and legitimacy. 

It’s that resilience that brings me back to the primacy of Torah itself. Not just in every generation, but especially in this moment. Even if Simchat Torah now bears unwashable bloodstains, the mandate to return to our foundational text feels more urgent than ever.  

It is entirely by coincidence that my new book, It Takes Two to Torah—co-authored with Rabbi Dov Linzer—is being published this fall, based on two years of conversations in which we discussed and argued about every parsha in the Five Books of Moses.

Our constant discipline was to hold up the lens of the weekly verses to the facts of our world, despite deep differences of Jewish observance and viewpoints. Dov is Modern Orthodox and I consider myself a committed Jew, although I don’t follow strict Jewish law. Yet our mutual candor and respect kept us talking.

Dov and I initially conducted our dialogues as a Tablet podcast from 2018 to 2020, spanning the American convulsions over immigration, the global pandemic and then George Floyd’s murder. 

I see how dated some of our assumptions seem in hindsight—for example, how mistakenly we characterized Jewish safety and Israel’s acceptance in the world. 

Every Torah exchange is inevitably of its time and blind to the future. But every verse is also an invitation—to ask what our foundational text requires of us now and what it’s teaching us. 

How do we read about Amalek this year without echoes of how that name was invoked after October 7?  How do we read Leviticus 19:16—“Do not stand by at your neighbor’s blood”—without thinking about our fallen soldiers, captives and the hundreds cut down at the Nova music festival? How do we read Leviticus 19:34—“The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens”—without addressing co-existence with Palestinians?

Beyond any of the numerous challenging questions posed by the Torah is one large, overarching idea: Survival means returning to the same story. Our book will outlive any enemy.  

In 1965, Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author of Night, wrote for the Yiddish Forward (Forverts) newspaper about visiting Russia on Simchat Torah and watching young Soviet Jews dance publicly despite the threat of the KGB.  

Wiesel wrote, “Jewish youth refuse to inherit their elders’ terror…. Let their oppressors implode with anger. They refuse to be robbed of their Jewishness and have their annual yontef beneath the open skies ruined.”

On this Simchat Torah, we will not be “robbed” of our Jewishness. We will read the end of Devarim (Deuteronomy), which features Moses’ dramatic death, and immediately open Bereishit (Genesis), with creation and the separation of night from day. We’ll dance with the scrolls and insist on the light. 

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Abigail Pogrebin is the co-author of It Takes Two to Torah: An Orthodox Rabbi and Reform Journalist Discuss and Debate Their Way Through the Five Books of Moses.