From Soles to Souls – A Timeless Jewish Story

When I was nineteen, I flew to Budapest for the first time. In between the traditional restaurants, museum visits, and late nights in local bars, my friends and I found ourselves at the infamous Budapest Holocaust memorial on the river – where hundreds of shoes stacked one atop the other serve as the heart-wrenching reminder of the millions of souls whose lives were taken, leaving nothing but the soles of their shoes as a remnant of their time here on earth. 

Source: Dennis Jarvis, Flickr

A few months ago, as I guided a group of Americans through Israel on a volunteer mission, one of the participants showed me a photo from the Nova exhibition in New York that sent my heart traveling back to the feeling I had as a young woman standing in front of the Budapest memorial six years ago. 

In the tiny screen of her phone, she showed me the part of the exhibit that moved her most – the “Lost and Found”, where piles of shoes stacked one atop another, shoes that were abandoned by thousands of festival attendees whose lives changed forever on the morning of October 7th. Their barefoot feet, which, just moments before, carried them as they danced under the sunrise, began to carry them as they dispersed in every direction, running for their lives.

Source: Author

One year ago on the morning of Simchat Torah, a celebration of life transformed into a commemoration of death, leaving in its wake a memorial of empty shoes that were now being reflected back at me through this woman’s camera. Seventy five years later, and here we are, memorializing the same tragedies faced by the Jewish people, from generation to generation, souls immortalized by the remaining fragments of their soles. 

One year later, as the holiday of Simchat Torah arrived upon us like a blaring alarm waking you from a sleepless night, we were faced with the question – how can we dance, how can we celebrate, how can we fulfill the mitzvah asked of us on this holiday when we are simultaneously carrying an unbearable weight of grief and pain?

There’s a story that was shared by the Baal Shem Tov to his students the first time he spoke of Simchat Torah. In the story, he recounts an unusual occurrence that happened with the angels in heaven as they entered the Garden of Eden on the morning of Simchat Torah. Upon entering the Garden, instead of encountering the usual cornucopia of holy objects scattered across paradise such as prayer books and tefillin, they stood staring at piles upon piles of abandoned shoes. Why was their heavenly abode suddenly littered with torn soles?

They sought an explanation and were given a clear answer – these are the remains of last night’s celebrations, where Jews around the world danced for hours and hours with their Torah scrolls embraced in their arms. There was so much joy as they danced in Simchat Torah that they left their shoes behind. These seemingly unholy objects are in fact the remnants of the holiest of acts taking place. 

On Simchat Torah, we are taught that you only need one thing in order to celebrate – two legs upon which to dance. Just like the Torah has two “legs” which we roll out each week to read the Torah portion, so do we have two legs which represent the sacredness of dichotomy that is the Jewish people. Each week, we praise these dichotomies in the Friday night Kiddush – the creation of darkness and light, sky and earth, water and fire, animal and man, peace and war, joy and suffering.

The story of heaven scattered with shoes is the story of the survival of the Jewish people. This year, on Simchat Torah, as we tried to find the strength to dance, we are reminded, once again, that positive cannot exist without negative, and that just like a magnet, these two opposing forces are actually drawn to one another. The strongest connections are formed in the meeting of opposites.

These three shoe stories – of October 7th, the Budapest memorial, and Simchat Torah – take place over a span of hundreds of years, and yet the outcome was the same: a wake of empty shoes replacing the presence of physical bodies, Jewish souls departed leaving behind a path of vacant soles. Two of the stories are memories of the horrors committed against the Jewish people, one story the epitome of our resilience. The same symbol embodies light and darkness, life and death, beginning and end. 

The word “simcha” in Hebrew is often translated as “joy” in English. However, in Hebrew, the word for joy is actually “osher” (אושר). Simcha, directly translated, means happiness. There’s a school of thought that analyzes the difference between happiness and joy. It is said that joy is a state of being, whereas happiness is dependent upon your current situation. You can be joyful but not happy, as joy comes from your internal being, happiness comes from external conditions. So why don’t we call this holiday “Osher Torah?” Why the conditionality?

As a Jewish people, we are supposed to always remain joyful. In the depths of our soul, we are supposed to preserve to our best ability an unwavering essence of joy, even as we navigate our way through the deepest valleys of grief. It does not mean to reject or run away from negative feelings. It instead gives us a reminder that even in our darkest days, our DNA is composed of unconditional joy. 

This year, on Simchat Torah, cultivating an external happiness dependent on the current condition of our reality can seem nearly impossible. But in this challenge lies a great opportunity. It is a chance to remind ourselves that as we dance and fulfill the mitzvah of this holiday, we are dancing for those we’ve lost, those we still have, and those yet to come.

Whether they left this earth running barefoot from Egyptian slavery towards the freedom of the Promised Land, the atrocities of the Holocaust or from the horrors of October 7th, I wish to believe that before entering the gates to heaven, the angels have placed a shoe rack waiting outside with a welcome sign that says,

“Welcome to heaven, leave your soles and free your souls.”