Unity in Netivot: Spending Simchat Torah with evacuees - opinion

My wife, Yvonne, and I arrived in the ever-expanding city of Netivot on Israel’s southern periphery to celebrate Simchat Torah with our son, Natan, and his family. They have lived there for more than 20 years. Danielle, Natan’s wife, has a personal connection with Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. She was asked by one of its members if a few men from her community could help the evacuees of the kibbutz make a minyan (prayer quorum) for Simchat Torah services.

Members of the kibbutz have been living temporarily in two large apartment buildings in Netivot since the October 7 massacre. Danielle invited Yvonne and me to join them to celebrate Simchat Torah with members of Ein Hashlosha.

When we arrived in Netivot, our family walked to the buildings where Ein Hashlosha members were temporarily residing. We were greeted in the lobby by Meir, who thanked us for joining them. Three other members of the community were also there to be part of this observance. One was Rav David, the head of the Netivot hesder yeshiva, where our son had learned after high school and before the army.

Rav David is a soft-spoken, articulate, learned, and wise man who I presume is in his sixties. We were happy to see him after many years. Together with the kibbutz members, he made this Simchat Torah the most meaningful one my wife and I had ever experienced.

Simchat Torah

Yvonne and I made aliyah in the mid-1990s and have enjoyed the Simchat Torah celebrations in Beit Zayit where we live for the past 29 years.

Beit Zayit, located just outside Jerusalem, is considered a non-religious moshav, but it has a full spectrum of Jews who join the Simchat Torah festivities year after year, from those who are not observant to some haredim (ultra-Orthodox), National-Religious, traditional, and “out-of-the-box” spiritual seekers. We love celebrating Simchat Torah in Beit Zayit with the flow of joy and energy.

But the Simchat Torah experience this 30th year in Netivot was the most meaningful of all. Meir, the kibbutz representative who had first greeted us, was the organizer of the event. He was born in Beersheba and has moved to new residences, as his wife shared with me, with a Zionist fervor: to Eilon Moreh, then to Mehola in the Jordan Valley, and then to Ein Hashlosha.

When the prayer services began, Meir made it a point to get everyone involved. Rav David read beautifully both the last weekly Torah portion and part of the first Torah portion, as are traditionally read, and assisted those who were not familiar with the prayers prior to each Torah reading. There was an aura of awe and joy, but tempered with the reality of what the kibbutz members went through on October 7.

The seven rounds (hakafot) of carrying the Torah scrolls, with singing and dancing, were each introduced by Meir with special prayers for our soldiers, our wounded, our hostages, and for the bereaved families and their loved ones who had lost their lives on October 7 and throughout Israel’s war of this past year.

Between hakafot, a young kibbutz member with a baby in her arms spoke about how she was in the maternity ward on October 6 ready to give birth. Her mother had come to visit the kibbutz to help with the other children. The young woman gave birth on October 7, the same day her mother was killed. The young mother, with tears in her eyes and stopping several times, finished by reading an excerpt about Simchat Torah from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory.

It is hard to express in words the unity and closeness I felt as all the men held hands and danced with the Torah scrolls. These were people I had never met but felt so close to, and I am sure Yvonne felt the same way as she danced with the women.

At the completion of the prayer celebration, the kibbutz members invited us for a kiddush, and we stood talking with our new friends. Rav David, in his humble way, spontaneously asked if he could say a few words at the kiddush. It took some time for the 70-plus people gathered outside their temporary residence to quiet down.

Rav David began by asking if the kibbutz was still involved with agricultural activities. A female kibbutz member answered in the affirmative.

Then Rav David shared a parable about how the process of grafting a fruit tree, connecting new branches to the trunk, can give it new strength and new fruit that it did not have before, a unity of energy and light – exactly what we experienced during the Simchat Torah celebration in Netivot.

After the moving experience we had with members of Ein Hashlosha, I thought to myself that all the talk of unity we hear with new political coalitions cannot come close to the true unifier for the Jewish people in and out of Israel: our Torah heritage and the values it espouses in its many manifestations – 70 faces to the Torah.

The writer is the founder and executive chairman of Agri-Light Energy Systems, whose technology maximizes clean solar energy generation and optimizes crop cultivation in dual land-use settings. He is also the founder of Value Sports, a nonprofit organization that promotes values and character building for children and youth sports.