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Across the US, Simchat Torah festivities are muted by anxiety about Israel at war

(JTA) — For the last dozen years, an array of synagogues from multiple denominations have gathered together in a central location in Brooklyn to sing and dance with the Torah, the centerpiece of Simchat Torah celebrations.
But in advance of the holiday’s onset Saturday night, the organizers of Simchat Torah Across Brooklyn announced that the day’s unprecedented violence in Israel had caused a change of plans.
“Tonight will be different,” the organizers wrote on the event’s Facebook page on Saturday afternoon. “In response to the horrific war on Israel today, our joy will become a vigil and our prayers will turn to solidarity with our Israeli family. We will demonstrate the unity of the Jewish people and that Americans and American Jews stand with Israel.”
It was a transformation that unfolded again and again across the United States as Simchat Torah, celebrated as one of the most joyous days of the Jewish calendar, began under the shadow of catastrophe.
Hamas sent thousands of rockets into the country while also invading by land, killing 300 people, wounding more than 1,500 and taking hostages in one of the grimmest days in Israeli history. Questions about how the country could have been so surprised simmered beneath a mounting death toll, ongoing fighting and hours-long hostage situations, and declarations by Israel’s leadership that Saturday’s bloodshed marked the beginning of a long and painful war.
In Israel, the holiday ended on Saturday night, though it was interrupted across the country by gunfire, sirens and call-ups of military reservists. In the United States, where the holiday is celebrated over two days — with the dancing held on the second — rabbis anguished over how and whether to celebrate in the face of the ongoing tragedy.
“I apologize for posting on Shabbat/Chag,” a rabbi wrote in a private Facebook group for Jewish clergy on Saturday, using the Hebrew word for holiday and requesting advice. “I’m struggling to find balance between observing Simchat Torah and respecting the tragedy that is happening.”
On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky sent his congregants at Congregation Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue, a rare message on Saturday afternoon saying that he had decided to scale back the night’s festivities.
“You know I would not typically send out a message on Shabbat and Hag,” he wrote. “But given the terrible events today in Israel — with hundreds dead, thousands wounded, and some, as yet unknown, number held hostage in Gaza — I feel it is impossible to celebrate Simchat Torah as usual.”
Ansche Chesed held a children’s event as scheduled but did not call for dancing. Dozens of adults then gathered for a prayer service and to read the end and the beginning of the Torah, but without the festive cheer that typically accompanies the reading. Instead, Kalmanofsky shared reflections from congregants about their fear and concern for those they knew in Israel.
At Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, Rabbi Michael Siegel discussed the day’s violence before moving into the holiday service.
“Today is Israel’s 9/11. All of us know people in Israel. All of us have spent the day thinking and praying for them. All of us. And it’s Simchat Torah,” he said. “How do you bridge that? How do we find our way from tears to joy? How is that even possible?”
Siegel said he had spoken to a congregant whose relative in Israel had urged her to attend the holiday service because so many Israelis could not. He led the Conservative congregation in a traditional prayer for peace, which Siegel noted includes wishes for all of Israel and Jerusalem to lie under a canopy of peace.
“How those words speak to us tonight,” he said. “Hundreds, thousands of Israelis, thousands of our brothers and sisters are not sleeping tonight. We stand with them.”
At IKAR in Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous cautioned that the evening would not be the dance party that usually takes place on the holiday.
“Anybody who has celebrated Simchat Torah at IKAR before knows that this is a night of incredibly overflowing joy,” she said. “Very obviously tonight, given everything that’s happened in Israel today, it’s very hard if not impossible to experience that kind of joy.”
Brous announced a modified, subdued version of the typical Torah-dancing but said the congregation would neither “overcome our impulse to cry and instead bring the dance out” nor “sit on the floor and weep all night and not experience any of the joy. Because we know that part of the great challenge of being alive and being human in the world is to actually experience both.”
Earlier on Saturday, congregations recited the Yizkor prayer, a service held four times a year in memory of loved ones who have died. Faced with the attack on Israel, synagogues turned to that and other age-old Jewish responses to tragedy and death. Some recited psalms beseeching God for help, and prayers on behalf of Jewish captives. Some also added communal singing of “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. In at least one synagogue in Washington, D.C. the dancing proceeded but all the songs were about Israel or a hope for peace.
And some rabbis innovated new rituals for a situation without precedent. Rabbi Rachel Barenblat of Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires, a Reform synagogue, wrote a prayer on Saturday morning that her congregation recited at Yizkor and again before Simchat Torah festivities.
“The words are simple, maybe facile. But they are the most genuine prayer of my heart,” Barenblat wrote on Facebook.
The prayer expressed solidarity with the people of Israel and hoped for peace with the Palestinians. It concluded: “God, with all the desperation of our hearts we plead: may it be true that peace will yet come.”
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.