Day 384 - An IDF rabbi weighs in on marking a difficult Simhat Torah
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.
In this special Simhat Torah holiday episode, host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaks with Rabbi Avi Poupko, who is currently serving in reserve duty as part of the IDF rabbinate along the northern border.
Simhat Torah is an annual celebration of the completion -- and restarting -- of the Shabbat Torah-reading cycle. Usually a day of joyous prayer, singing and dancing, the observance of this holiday is forever intertwined with last year's Hamas massacre of 1,200 and the hostage-taking of another 251 to Gaza.
Poupko talks about observing the Sukkot holiday while listening to rocket fire overhead and gives historical context to how Jews have always adapted to tragedy and carried on "doing Jewish."
For news updates, please check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing live blog.
Discussed articles include:
How Israeli Jews face the Simhat Torah holiday, forever marred by Oct. 7 massacre
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Illustrative image: A Jewish man carries a Torah scroll during Simhat Torah celebrations at Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, on October 21, 2019. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Times of Israel's daily briefing. |
| 0:10.9 | Today is October 24th, Day 384 of the war. |
| 0:15.8 | I'm Maud Borssel Dan here with Rabbi Avi Pupko, recording a few days ahead of this Simchat Torah holiday. Hi, Avi. Thanks for |
| 0:24.1 | joining me. Yeah, thank you for having me. Where am I finding you today, Avi? I am just south of the |
| 0:31.7 | Lebanese border in the northern tip of Israel, north of Mount Miron. In what capacity are you serving? |
| 0:39.3 | I'm in Miloim, in a special unit of the Rabanut. |
| 0:43.2 | And we're not on a base anymore. |
| 0:45.3 | We are on a forward field camp, I guess you would call it. |
| 0:50.4 | And what do you do there, generally? |
| 0:52.8 | It's what I've been doing since I joined. |
| 0:55.4 | We are a combing unit of the Rabanut. |
| 0:58.2 | So if something, if there's an incident that then it's, we go in, we comb the area for those maybe who are missing. |
| 1:06.0 | And also help to take out fallen soldiers, God forbid, from the fighting areas. |
| 1:12.6 | So we are here to discuss, among other things, celebrating this Simchat Torah holiday. |
| 1:19.0 | I know you from our home turf. |
| 1:21.5 | You're my neighborhood rabbi, shall we say. |
| 1:24.5 | And you lead or help lead a congregation that I as a secular woman don't attend |
| 1:31.2 | very often, but when I do attend, that would be the place that I go to. And I want to hear, first |
| 1:36.7 | of all, what is Simchat Torah? Right. It's a good question. Simchat Torah is actually quite a complicated holiday, especially in Israel. It's more of a hybrid |
| 1:49.0 | holiday, and in fact, one, not in the most seamless of ways. Simchat Torah, this day where we celebrate |
| 1:57.8 | the finishing of the five books of Moses and then immediately begin the book of |
| 2:02.2 | Beraeshita, the book of Genesis, from the beginning. It's a day and its customs and celebrations |
... |
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