About a year ago I went to the funeral for Dina Lemberger z”l. She was the younger sister of my dear friend from college Yishai. Dina died way too early. It was devastating. At the funeral their older sister Michal, who is a gifted writer, gave a memorable eulogy for Dina. In her remarks she talked about Dina’s long “fight with cancer”. Forgive me for paraphrasing or misquoting, but it has been a year. Michal took issue with this whole militaristic frame of “fighting cancer”. In truth, there is no winning this war on cancer, there are only casualties. When it comes to cancer all you can do is try your best to show up with grace, poise, and humor. It was clear that Dina did just that in her life.

October 7th was just over a week after Dina’s funeral. The Lemberger family local tragedy was upstaged by our national trauma. Since that day Israel has been going from Shiva to Shiva. According to Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant the country is under attack from seven sides. Israel is engaged in a full-scale war against Hamas in Gaza, and in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has escalated its attacks. There is also smaller-scale skirmishes taking place with all of the Iran surrogates in the West Bank, Iraq, Syria, Yemen; and now with Iran itself. This last year has been one of pain and suffering for so many people. And domestically, here we have seen a huge rise of hate crimes against Jews and antisemitism on campus. In one year we went from a Golden Age of Jewish life to it ending and finding ourselves in the middle of a global threat. Thinking back a year to Dina’s passing it is hard to locate one individual family’s loss represented by a Yahrzeit candle amidst the sense that the whole world is burning.

As we prepare for Sukkot I wanted to offer an invitation to hope. Sukkot is not the holiday of Judgement or Repentance, those days have just passed. Rather Sukkot is the holiday of being present. About this time we read:

You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in sukkot, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God. (Leviticus 23:42-43)

Sukkot is a reenactment of our time with God in the desert after our liberation from Egypt before our entering into the Land of Israel. This is a time of our connecting with each other and our God. Throughout this period we are very busy with all of the commandments of Sukkot. We have the Sukkah and 4 species with their myriad of rules. At the end of this time we transition from Sukkot to Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. This is all of togetherness of Sukkot, but without any of props or additional rules. This is really the apex of our celebration of just being present there with each other.

Last year, it was on Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, this moment of national and divine intimacy, that Israel was invaded by Hammas. This perspective just adds another level of pain and anguish on top of everything else that has been lost this last year. But as we come back around to Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah we take a moment to pause and reflect. Faced with these existential crises, of course we need to win the wars on all of Israel’s fronts. But survival is not enough. This year Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah it will hard to be happy. Our joy will be overshadowed by the anniversary of the October 7th attack and the ongoing wars. That said these holidays are an invitation to be present. Or better said by Michal Lemberger, we need to try to show up with grace, poise, and humor. This is how our drive to survive will allow us to thrive.