Shemini Atzeres/Simchas Torah 5778

Rabbi YY Jacobson

• October 9, 2017
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• 19 Tishrei 5778
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  The Anonymous Soldier

  A Mysterious Holiday

  Rabbi YY Jacobson

  • October 9, 2017

  We Didn’t Eat Enough?

  The Sages wondered why we have the holiday of Shemini Atzeres? We went through so many holidays during this month of Tishrei; what is the need for yet another Yom-Tov? We just finished celebrating seven days straight of Sukkos. So what now? Another party? We didn’t eat enough?

  The Midrash and Rashi offer a parable to explain the meaning behind this holiday.

  The parable tells about a father whose children came from far away to visit him. The father loved his children dearly and their stay with him was incredibly delightful and meaningful. When the time came for them to depart, the father just couldn’t bear to part with them. “Your separation is too difficult for me,” the father said, “please stay one more day and let us feast together for one more day.”

  This is the idea of Shemini Atzeres; G-d wants to spend one more day with the Jewish People.

  רש"י פינחס כט, לו: "פר אחד איל אחד" – אלו כנגד ישראל. התעכבו לי מעט עוד. ולשון חבה הוא זה כבנים הנפטרים מאביהם והוא אומר להם קשה עלי פרידתכם עכבו עוד יום אחד. משל למלך שעשה סעודה וכו' כדאיתא במס' (סוכה דף נ"ה) ובמדרש רבי תנחומא.

  It is a lovely idea. But it does not really answer the question. How will one more day of feasting help the separation? It will only make it more difficult for the day after. The sadness on the actual day of departure will only be intensified, not decreased. Pushing off the departure date does not solve the agony of the separation.

  Your Separation

  The Lubavitcher Rebbe offered the following powerful insight.[1]

  The Midrash and Rashi use the following expression: “Kasha alai preidaschem” — “Your separation is difficult for me.” It should have said, “kasha alai predasanu,” “our separation is difficult for me.” “Our parting is difficult for me”. Not “your parting,” but “our parting.”

  It is here that we uncover the subtlety of their message. We never separate from G-d. We never part ways. Wherever we are, in all places and circumstances, G-d is with us and within us. G-d does not say, “our separation is difficult” because we are never separated from Him, and He is never separated from us. What He does say is “YOUR separation is difficult.” What does this mean?

  On a holiday people are relaxed, in good spirits, and thus more in harmony one with another. Especially during the days of RH, YK and the festivities of Sukkos, people tend to create more space for one another. There is a vibe of unity in the air. But then the holidays come to an end, each of us goes back to his or her daily grind, and very often that feeling of closeness also dissipates.

  There is no joy for parents as the joy upon observing how their children get along with each other, help each other, and support each other. There is no pain for healthy, functional parents as the pain of watching their own children drifting apart and fragmented.

  So G-d says: now that the “high” is over, I am frightened that you guys will separate from each other. “kasha alai peridaschem.” Your separation is difficult for Me.” Not our separation; but YOUR separation from each other is too difficult for Me to bear. So we need one more holiday: one dedicated exclusively to Jewish love and unity, to fostering harmony, friendship, co-operation, affection, respect, and caring between Jews.

  So on Shemini Atzeret and Simchas Torah there is one theme: Love and closeness. We express our oneness not in a passive sense (standing together in prayer) or even a symbolic sense (shaking four different types of plants, representing different types of Jews, and binding them together); we demonstrate it through an experiential, concrete act that encompasses our entire being, from our head to our feet. We do it through the dancing, we hold each other’s hands and we dance together. We dance in a circular formation, which is the meaning of Hakafos, to dance around and around.

  Why a circle dance? Why move in such a way that you don’t get any further than when you started? Because a circle is not about progress or achievement; it is about harmony and togetherness.

  In a circle, we do not place ourselves or others in a hierarchy—be it physical, intellectual, or spiritual. In a circle, we recognize that there is no such thing as higher or lower, more important or less important; we have different gifts, different challenges. In a circle, we are all equidistant from the center, from the Creator and Source of Life; G‑d is equally accessible to every person. In a circle, we can see the face of every single person, the part of them that expresses their innermost self, and truly connect with them and empathize without judgment. In a circle, we acknowledge that every person needs every other person for the circle to remain complete—we possess strengths that others lack, and vice versa. We all have our role to fill.

  Together we create one circle of life.

  The Convert

  With this the great Chassidic master Reb Yisroel of Rhizin explains an enigmatic story in the Talmud.

  The Talmud (Shabbat 31a) relates that a gentile came to the great sage Hillel asking to be converted on the condition that he teach him the entire Torah while he stood “al regal achat” — “on one foot.” Hillel responded, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the entire Torah, the rest is but elaboration.”

  Why did the gentile make such a strange condition? Would anybody come in to Harvard medical school and ask that they teach him all of medicine while standing on one foot? Imagine someone entering MIT and asking to discover all there is to know on physics while standing on one foot? This is absurd!

  Says the Holy Rhizhiner:

  In Torah, the holidays are called “regalim” (Exodus 23:14) because of the mitzvah of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem by foot. The Talmud (Sukkah 47a) says about Shemini Atzeret that it is “Regel bifnei atzmo” — “a separate holiday” — independent of Sukkot. (Hence, we make a separate “Shehecheyanu” on this day.)

  The gentile, before deciding to convert, studied Torah and was quite familiar with our holidays, traditions, and rituals. After comprehending the beauty of Torah, he made his decision to convert. One thing, however, bothered him: what is the significance of the “regel” — “holiday” — of Shemini Atzeret? He knew the reason for celebrating Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, but he saw no rationale for Shemini Atzeret. What exactly are we celebrating?

  Passover—we celebrate the Exodus. Shavuos—Sinai. Rosh Hashanah is the new year and day of judgement. Yom Kippur, the day of repentance and forgiveness. Sukkos—we celebrate the journey of our people for forty years in the desert. But what’s the theme of Shmini Atzeres? The Torah offers no clear rational.

  So the gentile said to Hillel metaphorically, “I am yearning to convert, I am blown away by Judaism; but first you must clear up an enigma bothering me. Teach me all there is to know ‘al regel achat’ — about ‘the holiday of Shemini Atzeret,’ the one-day holiday about which the Torah does not give any reason. Please, teach me the Torah on this one-day holiday, the holiday of “achas,” of “par echad ayil echad?”

  Hillel replied that Shemini Atzeret was given to the Jews for one reason: What you dislike to be done to you, do not do to someone else! It is the holiday of Jewish love. The entire holiday came about because G-d said, “Kasheh alai peridatchem.” I am distressed over the dissension between Jews themselves. I cannot bear to witness strife and animosity between you. Therefore, celebrate this one more day in complete and absolute unity, one that will evoke a spirit of unity within you for the entire year, one that will reveal that you are essentially one, and inseparable.

  The Anonymous Soldier

  (The following story I heard from Rabbi J.J. Schechter, who heard it directly from Aryeh Eldad).

  Aryeh Eldad has an interesting and challenging job. He travels to Israeli high schools to help the youngsters’ transition to a life in the army. In Israel, military service is obligatory, for three years, from the age of 18. It’s not easy for every teen-ager to go from high school into the army. So Eldad travels the country and helps many of these youngsters acclimate themselves to the idea of military service, and primarily, to inspire them to undertake this sacrifice.

  As part of his program he takes the young boys to Mt. Herzel, the cemetery where Prime Ministers, Presidents, and soldiers are interred. He particularly takes them to the military section, where thousands of soldiers are buried. In that cemetery there is a special section for soldiers killed in each war Israel had to fight: a section for 1948, another section for 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, etc. Eldad always takes his students to these graves, explaining to them the nature of the sacrifices these young men and women made, showing them what these young souls gave up in order to protect their people and their homeland.  

  In the 1948 section of graves, there is one tombstone which has engraved on it the day the soldier was killed, the location of the battle where he died, and the name of his platoon. But instead of a name, first name and last name, it just says one word: “Almoni.” The anonymous one.”

  So some time ago, Aryeh Eldad took a group of particularly difficult teen-agers to Mt. Herzel, and then to this grave of Almoni. He shared with them the story of this soldier.

  This anonymous fighter was a holocaust survivor. He lost his family in the war. He them came on one of the illegal boats to what was then called Palestine, under the British Mandate. As he arrived in the Holy Land, the war was raging. They told this boy: we need you to fight, to save our people from destruction. Eight Arab countries were vowing to obliterate the little tiny, not-even-born-yet Jewish state, with no more than 600,000 Jews living there. They gave him a gun and drafted him into the platoon. The next day he fell in battle, together with another 69 young Jewish men fighting near Jerusalem.

  As they retrieved his body for burial, and interred this soldier in his grave, they realized the double tragedy. They did not even know the fighter’s name. Not his first name; not his last name. Not his parents’ name. Not where he came from, or which Nazi Camp he survived. The only people who might have known his name, those fighting on his side, also died with him. They had no photo to go ask the people on the boat.

  So they buried him and they engraved the title “Almoni.” The anonymous one.

  Eldad went on to explain to these high school boys how 6,000 people died in the War of Independence, out of a population of 600,000, including 4500 soldiers. Ninety percent of the victims were survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who made their way to the Holy Land and died defending it before it was even born.

  Aryeh Eldad explained to them how all of these survivors whose families died in the camps had no country that would take them in. Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazi regime, with help from millions of other Europeans, murdered almost every Jew on that continent. Had there been an Israel in the 1930s, an untold number of Jews might have been saved. At first, Hitler wanted merely to expel the Jews; only later did he decide to slaughter them. When the nations of the world gathered in Evian, France in 1938, fully aware of the danger facing European Jewry, one country after another declared: We have no room for the Jews.

  From the beginning of World War II, the world was divided into two types of countries: those that expelled or murdered Jews, and those that rejected the Jews who had been expelled or who had fled from elsewhere. Had there been an Israel, there would have been a country willing to take in the Jewish refugees when America, Britain and the other nations refused.

  When Pope Paul VI criticized Israel's "fierceness" during a private audience with Golda Meir, she replied: "Do you know what my earliest memory is? A pogrom in Kiev. When we were merciful and when we had no homeland and when we were weak, we were led to the gas chambers."

  So, Eldad explained, these survivors gave up their last drop of blood so that Jews would have a place they can call “home,” a place where they need not justify their right to exist as Jews. And some of these young men we don’t even know their names. Almoni.

  The boys, seemingly moved, asked their director: Who comes to say kaddish for this young soldier? Who says yizkor for him? Who visits the grave?

  And Eldad said: Sadly, nobody. There are no parents, siblings, children, relatives or friends. We can’t even find family, as we do not know his name. But we have come here to pay respects and to recall his sacrifice and glean inspiration from his life and death.

  The boys said kaddish at the grave and they continued with their schedule.

  These boys were drafted into the Israeli army shortly after. One year later, on the yartziet of this “Almoni,” Aryeh Eldad gets a call. This class of boys, whom he took a year earlier to Mt. Herzl, were on the phone.

  “Aryeh, remember the grave of Almoni, that anonymous soldier in Mt. Herzel?”

  Sure!

  “Aryeh, we have found the family of that Almoni soldier! And his family is going today to his grave to say kaddish on this day of his yartziet!”

  “You guys are hallucinating. The soldier is dead since 1948. It’s been 70 years. We never found out who he is. How in the world did you find his family? We can’t even do DNA testing, as we do not know who to try to match it up with.”

  “Aryeh, we found his family. And from now on, they will be remembering him, commemorating his Yartziet, studying Torah in his memory, praying for his soul, giving charity in his honor, doing mitzvos in his memory, saying yizkor for him.”

  “You guys are crazy. Where in the world did you discover his family?!”

  And they said to him:

  אריה, מצאנו המשפחה שלו. אנחנו המשפחה שלו.

  Aryeh, we found his family. We are his family! We decided to become his family. We are on the way to the cemetery for his yartziet.

  Aryeh, we decided that we would become his family. We would adopt him as our family. Each year we will be observing his anniversary of passing.

  Here you have it.

  אנחנו המשפחה שלו.

  We are his family.

  Holding Hands

  In the Australian outback, known for its beauty but also for the ability to get lost there and never be found, a family goes camping and their little child wanders off.

  At first they don’t panic. She must have wandered into another family's tent, they assume. But after a while, they realize she’s lost. Everybody is frantically searching for her.

  More and more volunteers join the search, but to no avail. The child could not be found.

  As time passes the volunteers realize they need a concerted effort. They also realize that time is short. It would soon get dark, and once it gets dark it’s over: wild animals, cold, dehydration, panic, etc.

  One volunteer comes up with a brilliant idea: to form a human chain, in which everyone will hold hands, and spread out as far as possible, so no one would get lost. Then they would slowly close the perimeter of the circle, and in the process they’ll hopefully find the little girl.

  So they get supplies, hold hands, form a human chain for miles, and they begin closing in the circle. The sun is setting; it is getting dark. They shout her name, but there is no response… it is almost dark, but nobody wants to give up. They feel they will find her… It’s already dark, nobody can see anything by now. And just as they are about to give up, someone spots a little girl curled up against a tree. They run over, she is barely breathing…

  You can imagine the reaction… Everybody is weeping and praying for this little girl, as a doctor on the scene is desperately attempting to save her pure and innocent life.

  But, it was too late… the little girl breathed her last breath and returned her precious soul to its maker.

  One volunteer who had been there from the very beginning called out with great anguish: WHY? Why? If we could have only held hands sooner… If only we could have held hands sooner…

  My dear brothers and sisters, we do not want our grandchildren to turn to us and say, "Why didn't you hold hands sooner?"

  So, my dearest friends, today let us hold hands together and form a large circle of life…

  Let our circle of love and common purpose extend far beyond the borders of this synagogue and reach out to all of our brothers and sisters, wherever they may be.

  And today we hold hands not only with our entire community and our people, but also with all past generations of Jews. As we say yizkor, we hold hands with Almoni, and we hold hands with our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, all the back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachal and Leah. All of the Jewish people from beginning of time, till today, holds hands. We form one massive dancing circle. We are all one. All of our past lives in us. So we holds hands tightly, firmly, not allowing anything to come in between us, and ensuring that that sense of family and oneness remains eternally.

   

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  [1] Likkutei Sichos vol. 2 Shmini Atzeres. Yechidos to guests from Kefar Chabad, end of Tishrei 5744.

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