Today marks three years since the Simchat Torah massacre. On that day Hamas murdered about 1,200 people, 778 civilians and some 380 soldiers and police officers, and took 251 hostages. It was the darkest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

That day, in Israel, we were about to finish reading the Torah and start again with Bereshit. This Shabbat we read Bereshit again. We start over from the beginning.

Our monstrous enemies murdered many of our brothers. But we did not give up. We held on, we fought, we beat them, and we grew. And B”H the Israel of today is a different country: better, stronger and safer than three years ago.

ISRAEL’S ENEMIES, THREE YEARS LATER

Hamas. Its leaders are dead: Mohammed Deif; Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran; Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7; and his brother Mohammed Sinwar. Its military power is a fraction of what it was.

Hezbollah. It joined the war on October 8, 2023. In September 2024 its pagers blew up. Ten days later Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah. Today Hezbollah is much weaker than it was before October 7: militarily, economically and politically.

Syria. In December 2024 the Assad regime, Iran’s ally, fell. That same month the Israeli army climbed to the top of Mount Hermon on the Syrian side. And stayed there.

The Houthis. They stopped attacking Israel. Now they are at war with Saudi Arabia.

Iran. In June 2025 Israel struck Iran for twelve days, and the United States bombed the nuclear plant at Fordow. In 2026 Israel and the United States struck together again. The Iranian “octopus” lost its tentacles and took very hard blows to the head.

FROM DEFENDING AT HOME TO FIGHTING ON ENEMY GROUND

These blows are no accident. They are the result of a change in strategy.

Before October 7, Israel defended itself inside its own territory. It waited for the attack, stopped it at the fence, and went back to waiting. October 7 showed the price of that policy: the terrorists got into the kibbutzim and the border towns.

Israel learned the lesson. Today it no longer waits for the enemy. It strikes before the enemy strikes, and on the enemy’s ground.

This is not a small change. Today, in October 2026, Israel holds about 1,220 square kilometers of security zones beyond the borders it had in October 2023. That is about 5% of Israel’s territory, roughly the size of all of Gush Dan.

• Lebanon: about 600 km², up to 10 kilometers inside Lebanese territory.
• Syria: about 400 km², up to 15 kilometers deep. Israeli troops are 25 kilometers from Damascus.
• Gaza: close to 60% of the Strip.

In June of this year, Defense Minister Israel Katz put it this way: “The Israeli army will stay in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, with no time limit.”

Three years ago the terrorists were right up against the Gaza fence and the northern border. Today Israeli soldiers are on their land.

THE ECONOMY: OCTOBER 2023 VS. OCTOBER 2026

A three-year war on seven fronts should have sunk the economy of any country. That is what happened to Ukraine. In October 2023 a dollar cost 36.6 hryvnias. Today it costs almost 45. Its production is in crisis, and much of its infrastructure has been destroyed.

Israel is different. Just compare the numbers.

The shekel. In October 2023 a dollar cost more than 4 shekels. Today it costs about 3. The shekel is at its highest value in 30 years.

Reserves. The Bank of Israel held $198.6 billion. Today it holds $241.6 billion. They have never been higher.

The stock market. In October 2023 the Tel Aviv index (TA-35) stood at 1,830 points. Today it is at 4,290. It is worth more than twice what it was before the war.

The defense industry. In 2025, defense exports made up 29% of all Israel’s exports. The world buys what Israel tested in combat and proved works.

Three years ago, on Simchat Torah, they tried to make us forget the joy of celebrating our Torah. This Shabbat we open the Torah again, from the first page: Bereshit. We start over. With joy. Grateful to God. And stronger than ever.

In March of this year, in an interview with the magazine Olam Katan, Israel’s extraordinary Economy Minister and man of faith, Bezalel Smotrich, said that after October 7, economists and professors predicted Israel’s economic collapse.

The exact opposite happened. The shekel kept getting stronger. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange outperformed every stock market in the world and rose more than 100% in two years of war. The deficit came in lower than expected, lower than in many European countries. And investment kept coming in, especially in high tech.

How do you explain it?

Smotrich, who as a Jew of faith always gives the credit to Boré Olam, summed it up in one sentence: “It is the Ribono shel Olam, the Creator of the world, who is running the economy here.”

And he described how he handled his job in the hardest days of the war: “I said to the Almighty: I am making You my partner. I am putting everything in Your name. From now on, this country’s economy is under Your control.”

תחיית המתים

A Conversation with God, Under the Ground

Yesterday, on an Israeli television program, Avinatan Or said:

“On day 79 of my captivity in the Hamas tunnels, I turned to God and said: I know I have barely spoken to You in seven years. And I know it may look hypocritical to come talk to You now, because suddenly I need something from You, so I come looking for You. And I will tell You something else: there is a good chance that when I get out of here, I will forget about You again. So I am not going to tell You stories. I will speak to You directly and honestly.

In the Torah, in the Ten Commandments, it is written: ‘Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the land that HaShem your God is giving you.’ That is a mitsva I always tried to keep. I worked hard to be there for my parents. I worked hard to honor them, even after I took off my kippa. Now it is Your turn to keep the other part: ‘so that your days may be long on the land,’ not under the land.”

His Tefila was heard. A year ago Or came up from the depths of the Hamas tunnels, and now, B”H, he is “on” the Land of Israel, with his family and everyone he loves.

Stories of courage from October 7, to read to children.

High in the mountains south of Hebron there is a small community called Otniel. The air there is cool, and from the top of the hill you can see far into the distance. In Otniel lived a man named Elhanan Kalmanson. He was 41 years old. He had a wife and five children. He was in charge of security for the community, and before that he had served many years in Israel’s security forces and in the army. The people of Otniel knew that if something went wrong, Elhanan was the one to call.

Saturday, October 7, was Simchat Torah. That morning Elhanan was getting ready for the holiday, like everyone else. And then the news began to arrive, along with emergency calls to his phone. Something terrible was happening in the south, near Gaza. Thousands of terrorists had broken through the fence. They were inside the towns and the kibbutzim. People were calling for help, and help was not coming.

Otniel is far from Gaza. Very far. About two hours’ drive, over mountains and difficult roads. Nobody called Elhanan. Nobody gave him an order. He was no longer in the army. He could have stayed home with his family, and nobody would have blamed him.

Elhanan went to his parents and his wife and said: “This does not look good. I have to go help my brothers, the Yehudim.”

He turned to his younger brother Menachem, who had come to visit for the holiday. Menachem did not hesitate. The two brothers took their rifles, got into the car, and set out for the south. Their nephew Itiel, a very young man, followed them.

The roads were dangerous. Nobody knew where the terrorists were. But the brothers kept driving until they reached the area of Kibbutz Be’eri, a beautiful kibbutz of about a thousand people, with green lawns and small white houses. Now the houses were in flames. There were still terrorists inside the kibbutz, walking from street to street. Hundreds of families were locked in their safe rooms, in the dark, holding the door handle with their hands. They had been there since morning. No food. No water. Babies crying. Phones running out of battery. And the army still had not arrived.

Near the kibbutz, Elhanan and Menachem found an army vehicle, a small armored truck, that some soldiers had left behind. They took it. It was built for four people. That did not matter. They drove it straight into Be’eri.

And then they began the rescue operation. House by house. Street by street. They would stop in front of a house, run to the door of the safe room, and knock. Inside, silence. The people hiding did not know who was knocking. The terrorists had also knocked on doors. The terrorists had also shouted in Hebrew.

So Elhanan would speak softly through the door. “We are Jews. We came to take you out. You are safe now.”

And when the people inside still did not believe him, when they asked, “How do we know you are really a Jew?”, Elhanan did the one thing no terrorist would ever do. He said the Shema. “Shema Israel, HaShem Elokenu, HaShem Echad.”

And the door would open.

Out came mothers with babies in their arms. Grandparents who could barely walk. Children who had not made a single sound in twelve hours. Elhanan, Menachem, and Itiel loaded them into the little armored truck, ten, eleven, twelve people squeezed into a space made for four, and drove them out of the kibbutz, to where the soldiers and ambulances were waiting. Then they turned around and went back in, risking their lives.

Night fell, and the three men did not stop. Fourteen hours. More than a hundred people from Be’eri came out alive because three men from the mountains kept knocking on doors and rescued them.

On Sunday morning, October 8, the sun rose over Be’eri. Elhanan and Menachem approached one more house. It was dark inside. A terrorist was hiding there. He opened fire. And both brothers were hit. Menachem was wounded. Elhanan fell into his brother’s arms, in the kibbutz he had come so far to save.

Elhanan Kalmanson left behind a wife and five children in Otniel. And he also saved the lives of more than a hundred people in Be’eri, who are alive today because he decided, one Simchat Torah morning, that when Jews are in danger, “being far away” is not an excuse.

A few months later, the State of Israel awarded Menachem and Itiel the Israel Prize, the highest honor the country can give, for the brave thing the three of them did that day. Menachem accepted it on behalf of all three.

And in Be’eri, those who were saved still tell their children about the voice at the door that said Shema Israel to prove he was a Jew.

Stories of courage from October 7, to read to children.

In the south of Israel, not far from the city of Ofakim, there is a small farming village called Moshav Patish. The people there grow vegetables and raise animals, and everyone knows everyone, as usually happens in small places. One of them is a farmer named Rami Davidian. On October 7 he was 58 years old. He has a wife, grown daughters, and sons-in-law. He is not a soldier. He is not a policeman. He works the land and sells what he harvests.

A few minutes from Patish, near Kibbutz Re’im, there is a huge open field. On the night of October 6, thousands of young people from all over Israel had gathered there for a music festival. They danced all night under the stars. Many were still dancing when the sun came up on the morning of Simchat Torah.

At six thirty the rockets began. Minutes later, trucks and motorcycles full of terrorists who had crossed the fence from Gaza arrived and headed straight for where the young people were. The young people ran in every direction. Into the fields. Into the orchards. Into the ditches along the road. Anywhere they could hide.

At a quarter to seven in the morning, Rami’s phone rang. It was a friend from the north of Israel. His son was at the festival. He was hiding. He could not get out. Could Rami go and get him?

Rami did not stop to think. He did not look for a weapon, because he did not have one. He did not look for a helmet or a vest. He was in slippers. He kept the slippers on, got in his car, and drove toward the sound of the shooting.

He found his friend’s son hiding near the road. Next to him were fourteen other young people, terrified, crouching in the dirt. Rami opened the doors of the car and said: “Get in. All of you.” Fifteen people in a car built for five. They piled on top of each other, and Rami drove them back to Moshav Patish.

Then one of them asked him a question: “Can we give your phone number to our friends? They are still out there.”

Rami said yes.

Within minutes, his phone began to ring. And it did not stop. The young people hiding in the fields passed his number to each other by text message. Parents in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, who had not heard from their children in hours, called the farmer from Patish and begged him to find them. Each call gave him a location. A cluster of trees. A drainage pipe. A corner of an orchard. Rami drove there, found the people, loaded them into the car, took them to Patish, and went out again.

He called his relatives. He called the neighbors. “Bring your cars. There is a lot of work.” Soon several cars from the moshav were driving in and out of the danger zone, and Rami was the one directing them, phone in one hand and steering wheel in the other.

Sometimes the people hiding were too frightened to come out, even when they heard a car. So Rami invented a game. He asked them to stay on the phone and listen. And he honked the horn in a special way. “Do you hear it? Am I getting closer or farther?” Closer, closer, closer, until they saw his car and ran to it.

One of the calls was about a girl named Amit. Two of her friends, whom Rami had already rescued, begged him to go back for her. She sent him her location. Rami drove there and found something that made his blood run cold. Amit was surrounded by a group of armed men who had come from Gaza. Rami had no weapon. He had a car and he had his voice.

Rami speaks Arabic. He worked his whole life with Arab farmers and merchants. He got out of the car, walked up to the men, passed himself off as one of them, and spoke to them in their language. He told them the Israeli army was right behind him and that they had better leave while they still could. They believed him. They let the girl go. Rami put her in the car and drove off.

He went back. And back again. All day Saturday. All Saturday night. All day Sunday. He did not sleep. He did not eat. His family begged him to stop. He did not stop until there was no one left to find.

When it was all over, Rami Davidian, with his car, his phone, and his slippers, had rescued about seven hundred people.

Today Rami travels the world and tells his story. People call him a hero. He always says the same thing: he is a farmer, he had a car, and his phone rang. What else was he supposed to do?

But everyone who hears him understands. Courage is not only for soldiers. Sometimes courage is a farmer in slippers who decides, seven hundred times in a row, to go back one more time.

Stories of courage from October 7, to read with children. Story one.

In the town of Ofakim, in southern Israel, lived a grandmother named Rachel Edri. She was 65. She lived in a small ground-floor apartment with her husband, David. They had been married for many years. Their children were grown, and the grandchildren came to visit on Shabbat and on holidays. Every time they came, Savta Rachel had something ready for them to eat. That was who she was. Nobody left her house hungry.

Saturday, October 7, 2023, was Simchat Torah in Israel. Early in the morning, before the sun was fully up, the sirens began. Rockets were falling on southern Israel. Rachel and David had heard sirens many times in their lives. They did what they always did and waited for it to pass.

But this time the sirens did not stop. Then came another sound. Gunfire. In the street. Close to the house.

Rachel looked out the window. Armed men were running through the streets of Ofakim. They were not Israeli soldiers. They were terrorists who had broken through the Gaza fence and driven all the way to Ofakim. Some were running toward her building.

Someone pounded on the door. A voice shouted in Hebrew: “Police! Open the door!”

David opened it. It was not the police.

Five men pushed their way in. They had rifles and grenades. They were shouting. They shut the door behind them. Rachel and David were now prisoners in their own home.

Rachel’s heart was pounding. She was sure these were the last minutes of her life. But in the middle of the fear, an idea came to her, clear and simple: These men are on edge. They are shouting, they are scared, and they might shoot. If I can calm them down, maybe, just maybe, with God’s help, David and I will survive. I need to keep them busy until our army comes to rescue us.

So Savta Rachel did something no one would expect at a moment like that, something she had done countless times with her guests. She did what she did best. She looked at the five terrorists standing in her living room and asked if they would like something to drink.

They stared at her. Then one of them said yes.

She went to the kitchen and brought water and Coca-Cola. She made coffee. She took out a plate of the cookies she had baked before the holiday and set it on the table. “Eat,” she told them. “You must be hungry.”

They ate.

Rachel sat down with them. She talked. She asked where they were from. She told them about her family. When one of them pointed his rifle at her, she calmly asked him to lower it. It made her nervous, she said, and she couldn’t serve coffee properly with a gun in her face. He lowered it.

Rachel knew a few Arabic songs from her childhood. She sang them. The men listened. One even sang along. Rachel smiled. Inside, she was terrified. But she never let it show. Not for a second.

Outside, the street had filled with police and soldiers. They surrounded the building. Among the police was a young officer named Evyatar Edri. He was Rachel’s son! He knew his parents were inside with five terrorists. He knew every room in that apartment, every door, every window. He drew the whole layout for the commanders of the special unit, so they would know exactly where to go when the time came.

The hours passed, and night fell. Rachel kept making coffee. She kept bringing cookies. She kept talking. At one point, when the terrorists weren’t looking, she raised her hand near the window and held up five fingers, so the police outside would know how many men were inside. They saw. They understood.

The terrorists grew tired. Rachel did not. Or if she did, nobody noticed.

At 2:30 in the morning, the police special unit stormed the apartment. It was over in seconds. Rachel and David, Baruch HaShem, walked out unharmed, straight into their son’s arms.

When the story got out in Israel, people could hardly believe it. A grandmother with a plate of cookies had held off five armed men for hours and saved her own life and her husband’s. Reporters asked her how she did it. Rachel shrugged. “I gave them cookies,” she said. “What else could I do?”

But everyone understood what she had really done. When fear filled the house, she did not freeze or panic. She thought. She stayed calm so the others would stay calm. She looked for every chance to help the people coming to save her. And never, not for one moment, did she stop believing they would come.

הוֹד֣וּ לַה֣׳ כִּי־ט֑וֹב כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ

Based on information from @YBCisrael.

Only now, after the Omani terrorist’s confession, are we beginning to understand the size of the tragedy that, thank God, did not happen.

To appreciate the miracle and the Divine intervention that saved us, I ask you to come with me for a moment to a very dark place. It is the scenario that, according to Israel’s security services, should have happened.

Close your eyes and picture this. A routine Flydubai flight is on approach to Ben Gurion Airport. Since the plane left the United Arab Emirates, everything has looked perfectly normal on the radar screens in Dubai. Inside the plane, too, nobody notices anything unusual. It is an ordinary, uneventful flight. But in the locked cockpit only one pilot is flying the plane: the co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani terrorist. A few minutes earlier he murdered the captain, Smit Machchhar, who now lies on the floor, dead and covered in blood.

The terrorist killed him with the axe kept in the cockpit for emergencies, when a window or the cabin wall has to be broken from the inside. Hamam got up from his seat and told the captain he was going to pray. When the captain looked away, Hamam attacked him from behind, struck him on the head with the axe and pushed him away from the controls. Nobody heard anything unusual from the cockpit, whose door, for security reasons, must remain fully closed. Neither the crew nor the passengers noticed anything strange or realized what was happening.

With the captain out of the way, the terrorist took the controls and flew calmly toward his target: Ben Gurion Airport. There was no panic and no warning sign, not inside the plane and not to the control towers, because Captain Smit Machchhar had no time to react or to trigger any alarm.

Terminal 3 at Tel Aviv’s airport is packed. It is Chol HaMoed Sukkot, and the airport is full of travelers arriving in Israel and leaving it. According to Israel Hayom, about 100,000 people pass through the airport each day at this time of year. At any given moment, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people, travelers and workers, are inside the Ben Gurion terminal.

As he approaches Ben Gurion, the suicide terrorist carries out the operation he spent years preparing for: crashing the plane into the passenger terminal. In true 9/11 style, a plane full of Israeli passengers will be used as a weapon.

This would have been Israel’s 9/11, only many times worse. We were saved. By the heroism of Captain Smit and by a chain of miracles, with Israeli heroes and one Divine hero. Bore Olam stepped in to save us from a tragedy whose proportions we are only now beginning to grasp.

In the middle of Sukkot, days before Simchat Torah, three years after October 7, we would be in mourning, facing, God forbid, thousands dead and tens of thousands wounded in Medinat Israel.

We must thank God for saving us and ask Him to please keep being with us.

That is what we did these days of Sukkot, when we repeated several times in the Hallel the extended biblical formula for thanking God. In this case it carries even more meaning than “Baruch HaShem.” King David coined it to thank God in Hebrew: Hodu la-A-donai ki tov, ki le’olam chasdo! “Let us thank God because we are well [safe], and may His kindness toward us [the people of Israel] last forever.”

With these words we do not only thank God because we are safe. We also ask Him, and declare with Jewish optimism, that He will keep being with us, protecting us from our enemies.

On Wednesday, September 30, Flydubai flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv with 174 passengers on board, 166 of them Israeli. About two and a half hours after takeoff, with the Boeing 737 MAX cruising at around 34,000 feet, the co-pilot attacked the captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, with a knife. The co-pilot is a terrorist of Omani origin and is now under investigation in Saudi Arabia. Some speculate that he meant to crash the plane, 9/11 style, into an Israeli city. Israeli journalist Guy Bechor says the target was an American air base in Saudi Arabia, home to US military personnel and several F-35s, considered the most advanced fighter jets in the world. That would have served two goals at once: killing Israelis (the Little Satan) and Americans (the Great Satan).

There is little doubt the plan came from Iran (see here). President Trump has said as much, but the connection has not yet been officially confirmed. What is not in doubt is that this was a terror attack in midair. But up there, in the sky, miracles happened too.

THIS IS THE STORY

Here is the sequence of events as we know it so far, based mostly on the accounts of the Israelis who were on the plane.

First, the terrorist, whose name has not yet been officially released and who, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, “received Islamist indoctrination,” locked the cockpit door so no one could get in and he could take over the plane. He stabbed the pilot, Smit Machchhar, took the controls and turned the plane toward a high-value target to crash it. But Smit survived. Miraculously, while the terrorist was flying the plane, he found the strength and the presence of mind to open the cockpit door.

At that moment a passenger, Tzvika Manes (or his wife), was taking their little daughter to the bathroom and noticed that the cockpit door was half open and the pilot’s seat was empty. He alerted the other passengers. One of them, Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli plumber, went to see what was going on. Yaniv got into the cockpit and saw the wounded pilot. When the terrorist co-pilot saw Yaniv and realized the door was open, he began trying to wreck the controls so the plane would go down wherever it fell and, at the very least, kill everyone on board.

Hayun put him in a chokehold and, with the help of two other passengers, Tzvika and Assaf Arjuan, pulled him away from the controls. The fight was violent and the terrorist kept resisting, so they had to improvise. They tied his hands and legs with the plane’s headphone cords. There was nothing else at hand.

Meanwhile, with no one at the controls and the autopilot off, the plane went into a nosedive. The danger was not only that it would hit the ground. The enormous G-forces and the speed of the fall could have torn the fuselage apart or ripped off a wing in midair. In fact, that is what should have happened. The plane was dropping at about 30,000 feet per minute. According to a US military pilot who flies C-17s, aircraft far sturdier than any airliner, the breakup limit is 20,000 feet per minute.

During the fall the plane reached a ground speed of around 600 knots, close to the speed of sound. The Boeing 737’s maximum is 340. In every known case where a commercial plane came near those speeds, the tail broke off, the rear of the aircraft was destroyed, and everyone on board died. This may have been the greatest miracle of all.

As the plane plunged, Yaniv Hayun sat down at the controls. He was not a pilot. But not long before, miraculously, he had watched a documentary series, Air Crash Investigation (in Hebrew, Te’ufa BeChakira), and that bit of familiarity told him what to do: pull back on the yoke to level the plane and regain altitude. He did it just seconds before the plane would have gone into an unrecoverable dive.

One problem remained. Who would fly the plane and land it? The heroic pilot was badly wounded. A dentist on board, Dr. Shota Musaev, was treating him and managed to stop the bleeding, but the captain was in no condition to fly.

Miraculously, two off-duty Flydubai pilots were on the same flight as passengers, on their way to operate another flight. Thank God, one of them took the controls and steered the Boeing to the nearest airport, Tabuk, in Saudi Arabia, where it landed.

B”H no passenger and no crew member died. All 174 people on board, 166 of them Israeli, came out alive.

SEPTEMBER 30 AND OCTOBER 7

There is one more thing I think we need to stress. That instinct, the refusal to sit and wait for the problem to solve itself, the urge to run toward danger when lives are at stake instead of waiting for someone else to act, is one of the main reasons our people, Am Israel, survives, and thrives, in the State of Israel. Most people in the modern West behave like bystanders. The Israeli Jew is trained to step in when the stakes are high. The Israelis on that plane did not wait for the crew to come save them. They walked straight into the lion’s den. It is impossible not to compare what happened on this plane with what happened on October 7. When, for reasons that are still hard to understand, the army failed, the air force failed, and the security systems failed, thousands of Israelis risked their lives, and many lost them, to stop the Hamas invasion. Without them, without those who acted on the Jewish instinct for survival, the invasion would likely have spread much further and the death toll could have been even higher. When lives are in danger, the Israeli, who in most cases has gone through excellent army training, is ready, mentally and physically, to act and save lives. Today I heard that several people have posted something on social media that struck me as very telling: “On every flight I take, I’ll make sure there are at least one or two Israelis on board. That way I’ll feel safer.”

HEROES IN THE SKY

We tend to think of miracles as events in which the laws of nature stop working. But many biblical miracles are not like that. Human beings act in a completely natural way, and then the Creator performs the miracle. Nachshon walks into the sea, and God splits it. Shimshon fights the Philistines, and God helps him. Elisha tries to save a child’s life, and God brings the boy back from certain death.

Every miracle that happened on this flight began with a human act. God’s intervention shows itself in full when we look at the whole sequence. Then we realize that on the Flydubai flight, human forces and the Forces of Heaven worked together perfectly.

ושמחת בחגך אתה ובנך ובתך ועבדך ואמתך והגר והיתום והאלמנה אשר בשעריך

(Debarim 16:13-15)

“You shall rejoice [= enjoy] in your festival, you, your children, your servants, the stranger, the orphan and the widow who live in your city.”

SHEMINI ATSERET

During Sukkot we live in the Sukka and take the four species (etrog, lulav, hadas and arava) for seven days. Sukkot also has a third mitzvah, called simcha, which means “to celebrate” or “to be joyful.” It is the only one of the three mitzvot of Sukkot that carries over into the holiday that begins tonight, Friday, October 2: Shemini Atseret, followed by Simchat Torah, which begins Saturday night, October 3, and ends Sunday night.

Because Shemini Atseret is a separate holiday from Sukkot, the mitzvah of lulav and etrog no longer applies. In Israel, the Sukka is no longer used on Shemini Atseret. In the Diaspora, because the rules of the ancient rabbinic calendar are still in force, we keep using the Sukka on the first day of Shemini Atseret, but without a berakha.

ENJOYING THE TORAH

Outside the Land of Israel, as with every other Yom Tov, the holiday lasts two days in a row (Shabbat and Sunday). The second day of Shemini Atseret is called Simchat Torah. On that day we celebrate finishing the yearly cycle of Torah reading and, without a pause, start the new cycle from Bereshit. We sing and dance with the Torah, rejoicing that we are part of the people God chose to study and keep His Torah.

ENJOYING YOM TOV

The Torah tells us to be joyful and to show our happiness on these holidays. Physical enjoyment is part of the celebration too. During Yom Tov we share several festive meals with the people we love. The meals are prepared with care, and there is plenty of food. We eat, we drink, we honor the day, and we make it as pleasant as Shabbat (Shulchan Arukh OC 529:1).

We also dress up in honor of Yom Tov, the way we would for a wedding. According to the Shulchan Arukh, on Yom Tov we should dress even “better” than on Shabbat (ibid.).

ENJOYING, WITHIN YOUR BUDGET

The Chakhamim also explained that each person enjoys things differently. Before Yom Tov, they said, parents should give their children “roasted grains [to eat] and nuts [to play with].” Today that would be candy and small toys (not electronics!). A husband should buy his wife clothes or jewelry (“Happy wife, happy life”), always within his means. The woman of the house, for her part, makes sure her husband and family eat and drink well, within what each family can afford. Wine and meat are standard on the Yom Tov menu.

ENJOYING AND SHARING

Consumer society has taught us that happiness comes from success, and that success means having more, earning more and showing off more. The Jewish view of happiness is a little different. On Yom Tov we learn to be happy with what we have, however much or little that is. The materialistic world defines success as having what you want. We need to learn that happiness is not having everything you want, but wanting what you have, and above all sharing what Boreh Olam has given us with others: inviting people to our meals, especially orphans and widows (SH”A 529:2), and anyone who needs company, whether for material or “emotional” reasons.

Maimonides had this to say on this very important point: “One who locks the doors of his home [to the needy] and eats and drinks with his wife and children, and does not share with the poor, is not fulfilling the joy of this mitzvah. He is enjoying his own stomach…” (MT Yom Tov 6:18).

SIMCHAT TORAH AND ALCOHOL: ENJOYMENT WITHOUT EXCESS

Finally, physical enjoyment calls for moderation: “On Yom Tov [and this includes Simchat Torah, Y.B.] a person should not drink too much [alcohol]… because drunkenness and frivolity are not part of the mitzvah of rejoicing. They are vulgarity and foolishness… and [the Torah commanded us] to reach a level of joy that expresses our service of HaShem… A person cannot serve God through frivolity, light-headedness or drunkenness” (ibid., 6:19). “The highest way to serve HaShem is to be happy that one can fulfill [His will by keeping] His commandments…” (Maimonides, MT Hilkhot Sukka veLulav 8:15).

As Maimonides explained, a Jew does not need to get drunk to be happy. A person who needs to get drunk to feel happy does it to “forget” his misery. He shuts off his reason and his awareness to escape his present, a life without meaning. We, Am Israel, are the chosen people. On Simchat Torah we do NOT drink too much, because we should embrace and celebrate the privilege of belonging to God’s people sober and fully aware.

Some moments in the Halel of Sukkot seem made for a moment like the one we just lived through with the Flydubai plane.

There are four points in Halel where we wave the lulav (na’anu’im): once at Hodu at the beginning, twice at Ana, and once more at Hodu at the end. With them we thank God for our prosperity and ask Him to protect it from the enemies who want to snatch it away.

GRATITUDE FIRST

The first is when we say the famous verse HODU LAHASHEM KI TOV, KI LE’OLAM CHASDO (Tehilim 118:1): “Let us thank HaShem for His blessings [when we are well and prosperous].” “His favor is always with us [the Jewish people].”

Then we wave the Arba’at HaMinim twice on another very special verse: ANA HASHEM HOSHI’A NA (Tehilim 118:25), “Please, HaShem, save us, deliver us [from our enemies, who envy us and try to take our blessings away].”

At the end we say HODU LAHASHEM KI TOV once more (Tehilim 118:29).

These are two very short verses, but very powerful, and their meaning is very clear. We start by giving thanks. Hodu LaHashem ki tov is the classic verse of thanksgiving. It is the biblical, more solemn way of saying BARUKH HASHEM, or “Thank God.” It is the Jewish formula of gratitude par excellence, and it appears several times in Tehilim.

ASKING FOR HELP

The other verse, ANA HASHEM HOSHI’A NA, is one of the shortest. It is a plea to God: the cry of a people that knows that, as the chosen people, it is always exposed to the jealousy of nations that try to destroy it because it enjoys God’s blessing, prosperity and security.

Throughout our history, Am Israel has said these words when facing enemies who seemed stronger than us, or were, or in situations where, humanly speaking, there seemed to be no way out. To be clear, hoshi’a na does not mean we ask God to act while we sit and wait for a miracle. Judaism teaches that a person must act, fight, run, rescue, and do everything in his power, while knowing that the outcome is in the hands of Heaven.

ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REALITY…

I think these two pesukim describe exactly what happened on Wednesday on Flydubai flight FZ1073. The Israeli passengers, with God’s help, foiled their enemies’ sinister plan, regained control of the situation and, miraculously, were saved. It was as if HaShem were listening to the prayer of the entire Jewish people, who were saying that very day: Ana HaShem, hoshi’a na. HaShem, save us.

And then comes the second phrase:

הוֹד֣וּ לַה׳ כִּי־ט֑וֹב כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ

Hodu LaHashem ki tov, ki le’olam chasdo, “Give thanks to HaShem, for He is good; His kindness endures forever” (Tehilim 118:1).

Thank You, HaShem, for being with us once again. Because when the danger passes, when the plane lands, when the operation goes well, when the soldier comes home, or when what we feared never happens, we have to know how to say “THANK YOU” with the same intensity and passion with which we so often say “PLEASE” to God.