Judaism, Jewish, Israel, Current Events, News
Seven Circles, Seven Sirens
An eyewitness account of what happened in Jerusalem, Israel
The first siren caused a pit in my stomach to form unexpectedly. It pulled my whole body in so much that my neck leaned forward. I took deep breaths to try and remove it, yet it stayed too noticeable to ignore.
I walked further down the Jerusalem streets, trying to take in the remnant of the Summer sun. Birds resumed chirping. People moved with a familiar urgency to their synagogues. Things seemed normal again, yet that pit remained.
For those who don’t know, Saturday was a three-pronged day of celebration for Jews. Not only was it the Sabbath, but it was another holiday.
Simchat Torah or Simhat Torah (Hebrew: שִׂמְחַת תּוֹרָה, lit., “Rejoicing with/of the Torah,” or Simchas Torah in the Ashkenazi dialect) is a Jewish holiday that celebrates and marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, and the beginning of a new cycle.
We celebrate this conclusion by taking a Torah scroll from the Ark and dancing with it in the open, sharing joy with others as we renew our commitment to G-d and our holiest book.
On a day like that, I thought the sirens were a mistake. Maybe it was a technical error.
Then, the booms started overhead. One, then two. Then three. It sent a thud across the ground and vibrations through bones. This wasn’t a technical error. Something very wrong had happened.
I saw a streak of white on the blue sky, too narrow to be a cloud and too erratic to have come from a plane. It looks like the smoke of what once was a rocket…
I stayed optimistic, almost to a ridiculous degree.
Okay, I thought, so one rocket was launched. We took it down, right? So, that couldn’t mean THAT much was happening.
I had a choice: make up a scenario too ridiculous to recount in this article or try to keep things normal. I stuck with the latter. Hope can be a dangerous thing in times like these.
Then the sirens went off again.
It became natural to retreat to stairwells or fortified rooms at that point. I followed the crowd of our makeshift prayer group while leading the service, trying to keep up spirits in any way I could. Maybe I was also trying to ignore that pit in my stomach. It went from being the size of a grape to feeling like a miniature black hole.
The day this occurred is unlike any in the Jewish calendar. The group I’m praying with was one of many in Jerusalem. We decided to join together to pray, dance, and celebrate. Yet now wasn’t a time decreed for joy. It was for something else, but I couldn’t figure it out.
The next sirens showed me a paradigm shift. People interrupted their silent prayers of the Amida to leave for the stairwell. People don’t normally do this, yet it’s correct when someone is in danger. It didn’t feel right. Jewish soldiers checked their phones to see if they were being called up to service- on an especially Holy day when electronics were forbidden. People whispered with concern and took deep breaths like me.
It was then that I realized just what this feeling was. The pit was fear- a mix of hopeless thoughts and anxiety about something too terrifying to think or write about. We may have protection from the rockets, but the fear never stopped. The whispers of kidnappings and terror attacks kept it growing.
After more sirens during prayers, we took a borrowed Torah scroll to the roof. It was a wide space with an awning covering us from the sun- perfect for singing and dancing. And that’s just what we did. We danced in circles, clapped until our hands hurt, and sang until we were hoarse.
People from many different countries carried around the Torah, and our little circle grew even bigger. In customary fashion, we circled with the Torah scroll, held by different community members, seven times.
The sirens blared again, so people moved into the stairwell and sang beautiful songs. When the sirens stopped, we returned to the roof.
We circled the Torah despite the violent noise, the impending war, and the pits in our stomachs.
No matter where we are from, being Jewish is realizing that in some years, we dance with our Torah scrolls, and in others, we are the Torah scroll. We take ourselves out of the safety of the Ark and let ourselves dance in joyful abandon. The songs we sing have a nostalgic feeling, and our dances and clapping are by instinct. Jewish defiance can be a beautiful thing.
An hour or two after the Jerusalem Police forced all the synagogues to stop their services for fear of attacks, I was walking up the same street when I saw someone standing outside a Synagogue. They needed a tenth man for prayers. I gladly walked in, saw the smiling faces of fellow Jews, and the pit shrank again.
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