What a Week: Sukkoth to Simchat Torah

When the children in our shul, from tiny week-old babies to teenagers, huddled beneath the tallitot yesterday on Simchat Torah, I became teary-eyed.

Three prayer shawls were held high above them as we stood together and sang Hamalach HaGoel in unison, after the brachot were recited over their heads.

My thoughts immediately went to the twenty-seven young passengers on the FlyDubai flight, a plane that had come frighteningly close to disaster, yet landed safely with everyone on board.

To me, they had been saved by the outstretched arm of Hashem.

How else could one explain the outcome?

Last Wednesday, at seven o’clock in the morning, I received a message from my sister Mona, who was in Israel at the time.

My first thought was:

Why is she sending me this fake news?

I put my phone away and davened Shacharit. Later, I reached for it again, intending to call my family and prepare for the day. We had many of our grandchildren in town for Yom Tov.

But then I realized that what I had dismissed as fake news was real. Messages were arriving from every direction.

I took a deep breath and read, and read some more. Before I knew it, an hour had passed.

But Yom Tov was waiting, and outside our sukkah a houseful of grandchildren was ready to begin the day.

I prepared eggs and more eggs. I poured cereal into one bowl and then another, my hands still shaking.

Never had I felt the hand of Hashem so visibly. So many coincidences within only a few minutes no longer felt like coincidences.

And perhaps that is one of the messages of Sukkoth.

For one week we leave the security of our homes and sit in an improvised little hut, eating our eggs and cereal beneath a fragile roof. We are reminded that the walls surrounding us are not what truly protect us.

That is how we live every moment of our lives.

Sometimes His presence is hidden. At other times it seems so close that all we have to do is open our minds, recognize it, and let it sink in.

Yesterday, on Simchat Torah, as we sang Hamalach HaGoel and I watched those beautiful Kinderlach sheltered beneath the tallitot, my thoughts returned to the twenty-seven young souls on that airplane.

They came home.

They could stand beneath a tallit again.

They could celebrate another Yom Tov surrounded by their families.

And as we sang the ancient words asking the angel who redeemed us from all evil to bless our children, they suddenly carried an even deeper meaning.

What a week.

What a reminder.

And what a reason to say:

HODU LASHEM KI TOV, KI L’OLAM CHASDO.