‘Something traumatic happened to our people’
Five Teaneck shuls join on Shmini Atzeret to remember what happened last year
Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah were a little different this year. As the holiday started last week, I found myself thinking about how it began last year.
Shmini Atzeret night — Friday, October 6 — is seared into my memory. We ate dinner with close friends. The food was delicious, and we had a great time. But mostly, I remember the night because it was ordinary and uneventful. A picture of happy times. The last time when the date October 7 did not hold special meaning.
I don’t remember exactly what time I went to sleep that night but it was likely before 11:29 p.m. New Jersey time, 6:29 a.m. Israel time, when our world changed drastically.
I am certainly not the only one who felt that the normally joyous holiday, when we dance with the Torah, was more complicated this year. Five Teaneck shuls held a joint program last Wednesday night, on Shmini Atzeret, called “One Year Later.” It ran from 11 to 11:45, to commemorate the time when Hamas started its vicious attack.
“In the weeks leading up to Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, I think every community was grappling with how to appropriately capture the dual and conflicting moods of this particular Yom Tov,” Natan Krohn, the president of Congregation Rinat Yisrael, one of the sponsoring shuls, said. “The somber anniversary of Shmini Atzeret,” which was on October 7 last year, “on the one hand, and the joyous celebration of Simchat Torah on the other.”
Dr. Krohn, a gastroenterologist, described some of the shul leaderships’ planning discussions. When Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, who leads Rinat, suggested holding a commemorative program that would coincide with the beginning of the attack, Rabbi Chayim Gerson, Rinat’s assistant rabbi, pointed out another meaningful aspect of such a late-night event. “One year ago at 11:29 p.m. most of us were asleep, completely oblivious to the horrific tragedy that was unfolding 6000 miles away,” Dr. Krohn said, quoting Rabbi Gerson. “This year we would experience just a small measure of self-sacrifice, in forcing ourselves to stay awake for this late-evening commemoration.”
The program, which was jointly sponsored by Rinat and Congregations Bnai Yeshurun, Zichron Mordechai, Shaarei Tefillah, and Shaarei Orah, was held in Rinat’s social hall and drew a crowd of close to 250 people, Dr. Krohn said. Chairs were arranged facing the center of the room, and the program started with the recitation of Tehillim and kumzitz-style singing. At 11:29, Rinat member Ben Antosofsky and Bnai Yeshurun member Moshe Sladowsky, who both had served in the IDF, led a moving rendition of the Misheberach prayer for Israeli soldiers, and the program concluded with a prayer for the release of the hostages, and participants singing Hatikva and then Am Yisrael Chai.
Rabbi Michael Taubes, who leads Zichron Mordechai, felt it was important to commemorate the attack on Shmini Atzeret, rather than just on October 7, because “the yahrzeit of the people who were killed was on Shmini Atzeret.” And he mentioned another benefit of holding the program so late at night — it gave people the opportunity to be together at a difficult time.
“We understood that there would be people who don’t stay up that late, but I think it was very important to do it at the exact time that it happened,” Rabbi Taubes said.
“It was a very moving program,” he added. “I think everybody there felt the same way. The feedback was very positive.”
Rabbi Strauchler also stressed the importance of the program bringing people together. “Something traumatic and dramatic happened to our people and we needed to commemorate that in a meaningful way,” he said. “And there is a value in doing that together. It creates a certain comfort when you’re with others who are going through the same experience at those moments.
“So we reached out to some of the other local shuls. We were geographically limited because it was Yom Tov so people were not going to be driving.” All five sponsoring shuls were represented at the gathering.
Dr. Krohn noted another reason the program was organized jointly by a number of shuls. “If there’s one spark of optimism that’s emerged repeatedly from this year’s painful events, it is a renewed feeling of unity among Jews,” he said. “Of course, we are joined together by our shared sense of grief, but our support for each other has also proven to be a remarkable source of strength and resilience, certainly in Israel but also here in Teaneck.”
“We did not want to have a lot of speeches,” Rabbi Strauchler said. “We were not interested in somehow explaining what this means. We wanted just to be together and to sing and to daven and to say Tehillim and to just be a community together in that moment, supporting one another.
“We needed a certain amount of lead time before we got to 11:29 just to set the tone. We spent a lot of time thinking about the lighting” — the lights were dimmed — “and thinking about the room set-up. A lot of thought went into that. But it really exceeded our expectations in terms of the number of people who came out. We thought it was really meaningful.”
Rabbi Strauchler felt that the program satisfied a real need and was helpful for participants. “I think there was a certain sense that Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah were going to be different and that we needed to acknowledge the hard stuff in order to allow us to rejoice the way that we needed to,” he said. “To have moved all commemorations to October 7 I don’t think would have been enough given how we process Jewish history and Jewish experience. For yahrzeits, the Hebrew date is significant. But then obviously there’s the social cultural point to it also.
“I imagine there are other things that go on in life that we just hold the secular date as being the date, but in Jewish life we very much hold on to the Jewish calendar and we process things as Jews through that calendar.”
Toni Nayowitz, a member of Bnai Yeshurun and the recently retired long-time owner of the Judaica House, a Judaica and book store in Teaneck, found the program very unifying. “You had a lot of different people and we were all there for the same purpose,” she said. “It was very apolitical. Everyone was focused on the hostages and the victims. There weren’t a lot of speeches and opinions and posturing. It was just we’re here because there are a lot of people who aren’t here.”
Ms. Nayowitz thought the late-night start time was very appropriate. She had gone to Israel on missions twice during the last year and had “the meaningful experience of visiting the site of the Nova festival and Kibbutz Be’eri,” she said. “It was gut-wrenching but I felt very good about being there, and being able to, in some tangential way, memorialize all of the people who were killed.” She felt the One Year Later program had a similar tenor and provided participants with a similar opportunity to memorialize people. “We memorialize yahrzeits of people we know and these are all people we know,” she said. “They are all our fellows.”
Rinat members Bruce and Sarah Feder also appreciated the program’s timing. Having the opportunity to commemorate “with our community at the exact time of the worst pogrom on Jews since the Holocaust” gave them a sense of belonging. “Not being in Israel on Simchat Torah last year or this year left us with a sense of sadness that we were not with our sisters and brothers in Israel at this horrible time, but this program gave us an ability to join with our local family and our family in Israel in solidarity, to say to our community here and in Israel that you are not alone,” they wrote.
Ilana Porat grew up in Israel, now lives in Teaneck and is a member of Shaarei Orah. “As a Jew and an Israeli,” she felt it was “very important to participate in such a meaningful event” she said. “Singing and praying together gives us hope and strength and displays our unity.”
Divsha Tollinsky, Rinat’s youth director, went to the program because “I felt that I wanted to do something for myself that was meaningful, that would give meaning to something we’ve been focused on for the entire year,” she said. “It just felt like it was somewhere I had to be for my own closure, like some way to memorialize something that’s been so powerful in our lives for the whole year. It felt like the right place to be at that time”
She had participated in commemorative events on October 7 but felt like “this was a different type of memorial that was maybe even more meaningful. Walking into shul last year and hearing about what was going on was such a powerful memory. It was part of the memory of the holiday, and the impact that it had on me, and I think on so many of us, was about Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.”
She found the program “very powerful,” she said. “It seemed like it was very clearly thought out to be meaningful for the community. Everyone I spoke to felt like ‘wow, this is what we needed.’
“And it really felt like a community. People from the different shuls were sitting together. The environment was heavy. It felt like everyone was there for the same reason.”
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