We Will Dance on Simchat Torah. But October 7 Will Dance With Us.

Three years after the Hamas massacre, the Jewish calendar asks something almost impossible of us: to carry unbearable memory into one of our most joyful days and still choose life.

There are dates that mark history. And then there are dates that divide it into a before and an after.

October 7 is one of those dates.

For Israelis and Jews around the world, those two words no longer need explanation. “October 7” has become its own language shorthand for massacre, terror, hostages, shattered families, devastated communities and a wound that three years have not erased.

But there is another date attached to that terrible morning: Simchat Torah.

That is what makes the Jewish calendar so painfully complicated now.

Simchat Torah is supposed to be among the happiest days of the Jewish year. We finish reading the Torah and immediately begin again. We carry the scrolls through our synagogues. We sing. We dance. Children wave flags. Adults who might spend the rest of the year behaving with perfect restraint suddenly join circles of celebration.

It is a holiday built around joy. And three years ago, on that day of joy, Israelis woke to horror.

Hamas terrorists crossed into southern Israel. Communities were attacked. Families were murdered. Young people celebrating at a music festival were slaughtered and abducted. Men, women, children and elderly people were taken hostage.

A holiday celebrating Torah and life became forever connected to death.

How do you dance after that? How do you hold a Torah scroll without remembering the people who never came home? How do you sing while knowing that somewhere another Jewish family is looking at an empty chair?

There are familiar Jewish answers. We choose life. We bring light into darkness. We refuse to allow those who hate us to determine whether Jews will celebrate being Jewish.

All of those answers are true. But sometimes truth is not enough to make the heart cooperate.

We are Jews, but we are also human beings. Memory does not disappear because the calendar tells us to dance.

Perhaps that is why I have developed an unexpected appreciation for the secular calendar.

October 7 gives our grief a place of its own.

Just as September 11 became more than a date in America, October 7 has become more than a date for Israel and the Jewish people. It is a marker in history.

There was Israel before October 7. There is Israel after October 7.

There were Jews before October 7. And in ways we are still struggling to understand, there are Jews after October 7.

The secular date allows us to say: Today we remember. Today we mourn. Today we say their names. Today we look directly at what happened without asking grief to share the room with celebration.

Simchat Torah asks something different of us.

It asks us to dance anyway.

Not because we have forgotten. Because we remember.

That distinction matters.

Jewish joy has never depended on Jewish history being painless. If it did, there would be very little Jewish joy.

We have danced after expulsions. We have celebrated weddings after pogroms. We have welcomed babies after wars. We have rebuilt synagogues after they were burned. We have said Shehecheyanu after generations of people tried to make certain there would be no Jews left to say it.

And perhaps that is what Simchat Torah means now.

The dancing is no longer innocent. But maybe it is more meaningful.

When we reach the final words of Deuteronomy, we do something extraordinary. We do not close the Torah, congratulate ourselves and walk away.

We immediately return to Genesis.

Bereishit.

In the beginning.

Again.

That may be one of Judaism’s most powerful responses to tragedy.

Begin again.

Not because nothing happened. Not because the dead are forgotten. Not because grief has ended.

Begin again because something happened.

Begin again because Jewish life must continue. Begin again because our enemies do not get to write the final chapter of the Jewish story.

Three years later, I suspect many Jews will dance differently.

Some will dance fiercely. Some will dance through tears. Some will stand at the edge of the circle unable to join. Some will look at the Torah and think about someone they lost. Some will hear the music and suddenly be transported back to that terrible morning.

And some may discover that joy and grief can occupy the same heart.

There should be room for all of them.

We should not demand happiness from grieving Jews as proof of resilience. Nor should we surrender Jewish joy because evil once invaded one of our sacred days.

October 7 and Simchat Torah now live beside each other.

One tells us to remember what was taken. The other commands us to remember what remains.

Our Torah remains. Our faith remains. Our people remain. Israel remains. And the Jewish determination to begin again remains.

So when the Torah scrolls come out and the dancing begins, there may be something different inside those circles now.

We will remember the murdered. We will remember the wounded. We will remember the hostages and their families. We will remember the soldiers and civilians whose lives were forever changed. We will remember the communities that woke to unimaginable horror.

And then, somehow, we will dance.

Not over their memory. Not beyond their memory.

With their memory.

Four days later, October 7 will give us another kind of space.

There will be no contradiction to resolve. We can mourn. We can cry. We can remember.

But on Simchat Torah, we will do something equally Jewish.

We will reach the end. And then we will begin again.

Because after October 7, perhaps that simple act carries a meaning it never carried before:

They tried to turn a day of Jewish joy into a permanent day of Jewish mourning. They failed.

We remember. We grieve. We dance. And we begin again.

Chag sameach.