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A Unique Simchat TorahThoughts on How to Approach Hakafot This YearThis year, Simchat Torah carries a complex emotional weight as we strive to balance the essential joy of the holiday with the painful memories of October 7. To help navigate these conflicting feelings during hakafot, we present two sets of suggestions from leading rabbis in Israel on how to honor both the celebratory nature of the day and the somber remembrance it now holds.Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, who serves as the Nasi of the World Mizrachi movement, Founder and Chairman of Sulamot and La%u2019Ofek, Chief Rabbi of Gush Etzion, and Rosh Yeshivah of the Jerusalem College of Technology, offers his perspective on maintaining the spirit of the holiday while honoring recent losses.Rabbi Shmuel Slotki, head of the World Organization of Orthodox Synagogues in the WZO, brings a deeply personal dimension to this discussion. Last Simchat Torah, his sons Noam and Yishai left Be%u2019er Sheva to defend against the Hamas attack in the Gaza envelope. Tragically, both were killed near Kibbutz Alumim.On Simchat Torah, we stop the hakafot and I give a shiur to the children. There are hundreds of children there. I teach them, tell a story, sing with them and at the end they get candy.In the middle of the shiur, one of our security personnel approaches me and says, %u201cRabbi, a war has broken out.%u201d To announce to the public that a war has broken out is a great responsibility. %u201cHow do you know that a war has broken out?%u201d I asked him. And he answered: %u201cRabbi, there are 32 hostages.%u201d It was hard to believe.Suddenly a guy from the community comes and says: %u201cRabbi, I%u2019m going to fight, and I want a blessing.%u201d Then comes another and another. Dozens of people, young people and even middle-aged people. About a hundred people were recruited from the community. Six of them did not return.A year has passed. Dead, kidnapped and wounded. I visited many of them. I was a partner in crying, a partner in pain. I also saw strength, the tremendous strength of our wonderful soldiers, the strength of citizens who risked their lives, and sometimes paid the price of their lives, to save other Jews, the strength of soldiers%u2019 wives, of parents and families. The strength of bereaved families. The strength of the residents of the north and south, who have been away from their homes for a year.As I also wrote in relation to Rosh Hashanah: The war is not only on the battlefield. The war is also on the home front. The enemies are trying in every way to disrupt our lives, to sow fear and panic among us, to cause division in our people and to shut down all joy in our country. We will not let them win! We will continue to live in our country with high spirits. Although, at all times, we will remember the soldiers, the wounded, the martyrs who were killed and murdered, the hostages, the bereaved families and the families from the north and the south. We will remember them, think about them and pray for them. We will also pray for unity within Israel, and we will remember that our strength is in our unity.Dear brothers,These days, we are standing again in the cycle of the year before the holidays of Tishrei. These holidays come at the end of one of the most difficult years experienced by the State of Israel since its establishment. Our sons and daughters were murdered and slaughtered by our enemies on our holiday, our brothers and sisters are still in captivity of the cruel enemy, our soldiers are fighting and giving their lives in defense of the homeland, and tens of thousands of our people who were displaced from their homes are still scattered all over the country.These days, we stand before the holiday of Simchat Torah, the day many of us were murdered and killed and the day they declared war on us. Simchat Torah this year raises many questions and concerns about how to behave in synagogues.On the one hand, there is the desire to %u2018continue according to their order%u2019, to continue the tradition of the generations and thereby show victory over the enemy who wanted to destroy us and erase our Judaism. On the other hand, the impact of the great disaster, the many bereaved families that this is the first yahrzeit for their loved ones, the many circles of casualties among us and the war we are in the middle of, oblige us to take a different approach.Therefore, we decided in the World Organization of Orthodox Synagogues in Israel to propose a model adapted for this year. Each of the seven hakafot will be dedicated to a different circle that is present in our lives this year around the war %u2013 IDF soldiers, the release of the hostages, the treatment of the wounded, and more. In every hakafa, apart from the usual songs and the established customs, we will add a special prayer, songs and Tehillim connected to the theme of the hakafa. An Introduction byRabbi Yosef Zvi RimonAn Introduction byRabbi Shmuel Slotki | 25