It’s challenging to write a column about Sukkot with the impending second anniversary of Oct. 7 on the horizon.
“Zman simchateinu, A Time of Rejoicing” is the Torah’s name for this season.
We are all still swaddled by the poignant soul-stirring melodies of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur melodies, melodies that seem in consonance of our national emotional state. We are still receiving gut wrenching “hutar l’pirsum, cleared for publication” death notices of fallen Israeli soldiers fighting like lions in the jaws of evil, to protect each of us. We are still awaiting the return of our tortured hostages from the claws of evil.
As I write, Yom Kippur is still two days away. The service in the temple of yesteryear, a centerpiece of the Yom Kippur liturgy, involves the priests in their regal garments. For the high priest, distinctly, there were added garments, among them, the breastplate and a turquoise robe, adorned with golden bells interspersed with pomegranates woven of sapphire, violet and crimson.
When the soldiers don their olive drab military uniforms to fight for the safety of us all Jewsin a war that was imposed on Israel, are not their garments just as sacred? If only war was not the service that we have been called to. We are living through a very dark chapter of Jewish history.
As many world leaders embolden Hamas, they empower this evil entity in potential negotiations and only foment more hate against the Jewish people. They reward and incentivize barbaric behavior and massacres as legitimate.
As many in the world continue to caricature Israel as the villain that it’s not, what they don’t understand is that right now, during these past two years, Israel’s Greatest Generation has arisen, forged in this fire of war.
Sweet youngsters, in the process of their lives, making plans for the future, perhaps to become doctors or musicians, perhaps to invent a cure for cancer, perhaps to meet someone and fall in love and start a family — these young people’s lives have been derailed, as they respond to the call of duty. The stare down those who want their destruction, day in and day out, serving to protect Israel against a monster set on Israel’s destruction.
The enduring and debilitating trauma and prices are incalculable. The thought of the torment of the hostages is unbearable.
It is against this heavy, pressing background — the second anniversary of Oct. 7 — that the most joyous days in the Jewish calendar arrive. Yet again, with a painful countdown to the anniversary of the day that unleashed the tremendous pain our nation is trying get through — but also, the countdown to the day that is the joyous pinnacle of the High Holiday.
Last year, for the first anniversary, the dread and incomprehensible feeling that it’s going to be one year since the attack and the situation is still unchanged, felt paralyzing.
How to decorate a sukkah as soldiers are on the battlefield, dying? As hostages are in captivity, dying?.
Yet, Sukkot, our modern clouds of glory, had to be built.
So alongside the colorful paper chains, lamps, flowers, Rosh Hashanah greetings and the children’s art projects, we hung the prayers for the soldiers and the prayers for the release of the hostages.
Alongside the posters of the mystical “Ushpizin” guests, I hung an artistic rendition of the battles fought beginning on Oct. 7 (actually, I hung it outside the sukkah because of how profound, triggering and graphic the posters were).
Now we approach a second Sukkot.
Somehow we will find a way to rejoice on this wonderful holiday. It’s the least we can do, to keep things going. After all, it’s part of what the soldiers are fighting for us to be free to do.
But rejoicing on these days is overtly bittersweet. It’s overtly a blend, a mingling composed of the gratitude and joy in reaching the blessing of another moment in the Jewish cycle, and of the tension and worry for the soldiers, their families, the wounded soldiers, the fallen soldiers, and the hostages whose homecoming we await, of course.
As I write this column with yet another twist and turn of possibility for ending the war and having the hostages home all at once, in these moments of abeyance as we go to press, I can’t help but hope that by the time this column is printed, all will be moot, because the war will have ended.The hostages will have returned home.
And preparing for Sukkot and Simchat Torah could feel like Sukkot again.
If only.
© IJN 2025
