Turning Bitterness into Sweetness: Simchas Torah 5785 - in Light of the Inner Dimension of the Torah

00:00 Who doesn’t want to rejoice on Simchas Torah? Every Jew waits for this day each year. Tishrei is the most wonderful and profound month for every Jew. And within Tishrei, every Jew looks forward to this great day, the last day of the month of festivals, the seventh month, when joy bursts through every boundary. A Jew embraces the Torah scroll and dances with it around the bimah. Jews from every walk of life, of every kind, dance together. This year, that joy is difficult for us. We have many questions, much pain, much sorrow. How are we supposed to rejoice on Simchas Torah this year—and can we? For all of us, the pain is still as sharp as ever. It grows stronger day by day. Especially since it all began on Simchas Torah, and a year has passed since that terrible day, yet we still have not been delivered. We all hope and wait for Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself to give us the true answer to all these questions. The answer to all the pain and all the questions is in His hands. As the prophet Yeshayahu says, “On that day you will say: I thank You, Hashem, for You were angry with me.” When that day comes—the day of the Geulah, the day the war is won, the day we see true deliverance and the true Geulah, the days the prophets spoke about and told us were coming—then we will thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We will thank Him for everything, even for the sorrow and suffering, because then we will understand their deeper meaning. That answer, of course, is in Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s hands. But in the meantime, while we are still in the days of exile, these questions trouble us. How are we supposed to rejoice on Simchas Torah this year? Today we’ll look more deeply into this and try to shed some light. I

02:20 am not going to answer the questions. I’m only going to illuminate what the Torah gives us. The Torah, and especially its inner dimension, gives us light and direction, a little clarity about how a Jew in this time, on these days, can enter a place of light even within the darkness—and, indeed, out of the darkness—and dance and rejoice on Simchas Torah. More than that, this joy itself is the vessel for the great deliverance we are all awaiting. It’s interesting: on Simchas Torah, a Jew dances and rejoices with a Torah scroll. Why do we dance with a Torah scroll? Can’t we dance without one? Sometimes the scroll actually makes dancing harder. You want to dance with all your strength, but you’re holding a Torah scroll, sometimes a large, heavy one. It doesn’t make rejoicing any easier. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the Torah scroll in the aron and dance together without stopping? But no—a Jew specifically takes the Torah scroll in his arms and dances with it. The answer is that we can understand and attain true joy only when we are connected to the Torah scroll. The Torah lights our way. That is what has lit the way for the Jewish people in every generation. That is why Jews in every era, even during the hardest periods in history, came to Simchas Torah, forgot their sorrow and grief, and rejoiced with genuine, pure joy. For the Torah itself illuminates our way and gives us direction. It gives us clarity about what true joy is, and then we really can overcome every difficulty and every obstacle and rejoice with pure joy in any situation, at any moment. So let’s begin with a simple, fundamental question, one asked in many sefarim and discussed especially in Chassidus:

04:33 What is the reason for the joy of Simchas Torah? It’s very interesting. The Midrash tells us—and this is also explained in the Gemara in Tractate Taanis, though the Midrash discusses it at greater length—that one of the main reasons for the joy of these days is the joy of receiving the second tablets. In other words, we all know that the Torah was given on Shavuos. We received the Ten Commandments then, but not yet the tablets. Afterward, Moshe Rabbeinu went up the mountain for forty days. When he came back down, there was the sin of the Golden Calf. Moshe took the first tablets and broke them. Then began the process of prayer and repentance, everything that happened over forty days and then another forty days. On Rosh Chodesh Elul, Moshe Rabbeinu went up the mountain to write the second tablets. On Yom Kippur he came down with them: “I have forgiven, as you have said.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu forgave the Jewish people for the terrible sin of the Golden Calf, and we received the second tablets. We celebrate that joy of the second tablets, received on Yom Kippur, on Shemini Atzeres. That is why, on Shemini Atzeres, we finish reading the Torah. We complete the reading at the end of Parshas Vezos Haberachah and begin Sefer Bereishis again. All the great joy of Shemini Atzeres centers on the Torah scroll. What are we celebrating? The giving of the Torah. And here a very simple question arises: Why wait until now? Surely this celebration should have been on Shavuos. That was when we received the first tablets and the Torah was given; that was when the wondrous Divine revelation took place. And indeed, we celebrate Shavuos every year. Shavuos is a wonderful, great festival. We hear the Ten Commandments and eat dairy foods, but we don’t see dancing that bursts through every boundary or unlimited joy. Shavuos is a festival, one of the appointed times

06:49 for rejoicing, but the greatest joy is specifically on Shemini Atzeres, on Simchas Torah. Why did we wait until now? Why don’t we celebrate this great joy on the great day of the giving of the Torah itself? The question becomes even stronger when we consider the events we’ve mentioned. At the giving of the Torah, on Shavuos, the Jewish people were righteous. They had left Egypt, been born anew, and come through all the hardships of slavery in Egypt. They were pure and clean. After forty-nine days of counting the Omer, they stood at the giving of the Torah. As the Gemara says, their impurity had ceased. There was no impurity, no stain. The yetzer hara had ceased. It was the most wonderful, exalted time. Moshe Rabbeinu was together with the Jewish people and received the Torah with them. Those were the most wonderful moments. Yom Kippur, by contrast, came after a crisis. The Jewish people had committed the dreadful sin of the Golden Calf, and many Jews—thousands upon thousands—had fallen. As the Torah tells us, many Jews were killed after the sin of the Golden Calf. It was a difficult period. Yet it is specifically with the second tablets, after all that had happened and all that hardship, that we speak of the greatest joy. “On the day of His wedding”—this refers to the giving of the Torah, as the Mishnah says at the end of Tractate Taanis. And we complete the Torah on Shemini Atzeres, dancing and rejoicing over the second tablets. It’s a simple question: How do we explain this? The answer is that here lies a secret that can also shed light on our own time. What is true joy? True joy is not when I have what I want, when I’ve received something, when everything is good and wonderful and clear and bright. That is not where the greatest joy lies. The greatest joy comes precisely when we can break through a difficult situation. It comes when a person has gone through a shattering experience and grown from it. In the words of King Shlomo in the book of Koheles:

09:18 The advantage of light that comes out of darkness. Or, as it says in the Zohar, when bitterness turns to sweetness and darkness turns to light, that is true sweetness. That is true light, and that is also true joy. There is a wonderful passage in the Zohar that gives us a way to look at this and understand it. The Zohar speaks about the beginning of the world's creation. It speaks about three periods: the time of Adam and Chava, the time of Noach, and the time of Avraham and Sarah. And the Zohar says something remarkable. In Parshas Chayei Sarah, the Zohar speaks about when Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world and created Adam. Now, on Simchas Torah we begin Sefer Bereishis, and very, very, very soon afterward comes Shabbos Bereishis. We read Sefer Bereishis, Parshas Bereishis, and we read the story of Adam and Chava. Their story goes together with the story of the Tree of Knowledge. The Zohar asks: What exactly happened with the Tree of Knowledge? What was the story? The Zohar says that according to one opinion, the Tree of Knowledge was actually a grapevine. Chava, Adam's wife, came into the world. What was she seeking at the Tree of Knowledge? The Zohar says she was seeking joy. She understood that joy had to be brought into the world, that serving Hashem was meant to be done with joy. When Adam was created, Hakadosh Boruch Hu told him: You were created to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “He placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it.” A Jew must serve Hashem. Adam received that charge while he was still in the Garden of Eden: to work it and to guard it. Our Sages say: “To work it” refers to the 248 positive mitzvos; “to guard it” refers to the 365 prohibitions. In other words, Adam received the charge to observe the mitzvos as soon as he was in the Garden of Eden. But Chava understood that simply observing Torah and mitzvos was not enough; it had to be done specifically with joy. She tried to bring joy into the world. And that was the story of

11:36 the grapes. She knew that grapes have the power to bring joy. As the Zohar says, she took a cluster of grapes, pressed them, made wine, and poured it for her husband, Adam. What was the great problem? At first glance, it was wonderful. Joy! She was right to want to bring joy into the world, to serve Hashem with joy. “Serve Hashem with joy.” “Serve Hashem your G-d with joy and gladness of heart.” The problem was that she sought a joy she could understand and explain, a joy that came from pleasure. I received something pleasant and exciting, and that makes me happy. How is it described in the story of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge? “Good for food,” “desirable to the eyes,” and pleasing to look at. In other words, these were beautiful fruits; they were sweet and pleasurable. Everything made sense, everything was clear, everything was wonderful. But when joy depends on conditions—when I get something sweet, when I get something that makes me happy, when everything is pleasant, sweet, and pleasing to the eye, then I'll be happy—that kind of joy cannot last. According to the Zohar, this was the beginning of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. She wanted a joy built on what I like, what I understand, and what I feel: when everything is good, then I'll be happy. Many people make that mistake. They think: When am I happy? When I have something, when I've received something—then I'm happy. But that is not the right kind of joy. Noach wanted to correct this, but he too made a big mistake. Noach said: Joy shouldn't have to come with explanations and reasons. Just the opposite: wine. What does the story of Noach tell us? All this is in the Zohar. After he came out of the ark, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him the task of renewing the world. The world had become corrupt, bringing on the Flood, and now a new world had to be created, the world renewed—a clean world, a pure world. Noach came out of the ark with his children. The first thing he did was plant a vineyard. He wanted to restore the joy that Chava and Adam had spoiled.

13:56 He wanted to correct the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. What kind of joy did he bring into the world? A joy of revelry: he drank, became drunk, and we know what followed. In Parshas Noach, what are we told? What happened to Noach's joy? That joy of revelry did not last either. He, too, did not achieve his goal. That, too, was not the joy Hakadosh Boruch Hu expects. Sarah—Sarah our matriarch—Avraham and Sarah. In Parshas Lech Lecha, the Torah tells us that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent Avraham and Sarah on a mission, and it was a challenging mission. “Go from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house”—leaving everything behind. Then he arrived in the Land of Israel. It seemed he had reached his destination, “the land that I will show you.” But a famine began, he went down to Egypt, and then Sarah was abducted—the first hostage in the history of the Jewish people. A very difficult story. Sarah our matriarch, Avraham's wife, was taken to Pharaoh's house. The Zohar says: That was the test of true joy. Sarah and Avraham had the strength to descend even into difficult circumstances and then rise again. “And Avram went up from Egypt,” says the verse—up out of the straits, out of the hardship. “And Avram went up.” They knew how to remain joyful in the most difficult moments. Sarah our matriarch corrected the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. She corrected Noach's sin. She brought the right joy, true joy, into the world: a joy that is not built on conditions, but on a deep, inner connection between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a bond from the deepest place within. A Jew knows that even in the deepest, most terrible hardship, “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is there with me. Sarah our matriarch had no children for ninety years. After ninety years of waiting and hardship, and everything she had been through, her only child was born. What did she

16:09 name him? Yitzchak—laughter. “G-d has made laughter for me.” She understood the joy that emerges from all that hardship. And it is interesting, as explained in Chassidus: when she named her son Yitzchak, she said, “Elokim has made laughter for me.” What is being hinted at here? Elokim. Of all the names of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, she chose the name Elokim. The name Elokim is associated with the attribute of judgment. It is a name associated with darkness, with concealment. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu conceals Himself, He is called Elokim. “Elokim has made laughter for me.” She understood that within this concealment lies a test, and a test is not simply a hardship. The Hebrew word for a test, nisayon, is connected with nes, a banner: “Raise a banner upon the mountains.” A test lifts a Jew up to the highest place. That is the joy Sarah revealed, and she was the one who succeeded in bringing true joy into the world. It is the joy the Jewish people have celebrated on Simchas Torah in every era and every circumstance, throughout the long, grueling exile. In every period of exile, even in the hardest moments, Jews knew how to hold on to a Torah scroll and rejoice with all their might, forgetting all their pain and sorrow, because their joy comes from somewhere else entirely—from that place of deepest connection. You can take a particular thing from me, you can take my money, you can take my clothes, you can take my... all sorts of external things. But you cannot take my joy from me, because joy is at a Jew's core. It is the soul of a Jew, and no one can dislodge me from there. And especially after what happened on Simchas Torah this year, the greatest test concerns precisely this point: they want to take our joy away. A Jew must know: take whatever you want, but you will not take our joy. It remains in full force. Joy is what strengthens

18:25 us, sustains us, gives us strength at every moment, in every situation. I want to share a personal story with you. I was privileged to know my grandparents. They were Holocaust survivors, very, very special people who had lived through all the hardships of the war. My grandmother was in Auschwitz. She had a number on her arm. Through great miracles she survived and remained alive. My grandfather had been married before the war. He lost his wife and children, and after the war he met my grandmother, and together they rebuilt their family. These were people who had lived through all those events, all those hardships, and the most terrible things—things we cannot imagine today. My grandparents did not tell us much. Throughout the year, we heard nothing from them about it. They were people who rebuilt their lives and, boruch Hashem, succeeded in raising a wonderful family: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren—a beautiful family, a family of Torah and mitzvos. Usually, during the year, they did not talk about the past or tell us about it. There was one day a year when they would tell us stories from the Holocaust. That was on Pesach. For several years—I remember this from my childhood—my grandparents would come to us for the Seder night. It was a great joy for us, and very exciting. We knew, and we waited all year for Pesach, because then my grandfather would tell us about what happened during the Holocaust. He always said that on Pesach, a Jew must celebrate the Exodus from Egypt, but must also celebrate our own personal exodus. And that is what he did. He would tell us stories from the Holocaust, and my grandmother would join in too. So I want to tell one story I heard from my grandmother and one I heard from my grandfather. My grandmother told us that they were in Auschwitz, a group of about three hundred women and girls, and they were

20:56 in some kind of factory. If I remember correctly, they had to paint the shells, the bombs of the enemy, of the Nazis, may their names be erased. That was their work. They were crowded together in one large room, three hundred women, and day and night they worked for hours on end at hard labor. That was what they had to do. Pesach night arrived—exactly eighty years ago, in 5705. They stood there working that night. Then one said to another, “It’s Pesach today. Let’s make a Seder.” “We had no shortage of maror,” my grandmother would say, with her wonderful sense of humor. “But we have to make a Seder.” So they began. One woman started singing Mah Nishtanah, and gradually the whole group, all three hundred women, sang Mah Nishtanah together. Then they went on to Avadim Hayinu. Whoever knew a passage from the Haggadah recited it, and everyone repeated it after her. My grandmother would say, “It was a Seder night we never forgot. We were in a completely different place. We forgot the sorrow, the grief, the hunger, the suffering, the pain. We did not know where we would be tomorrow, but in those moments we experienced true freedom.” My grandfather would say, “During the Holocaust, I went through the hardest places and the worst suffering. None of us had any doubt for a single moment. We felt Hakadosh Boruch Hu with us at every moment, wherever we were.” One especially remarkable thing I want to tell you, which my grandfather recounted, happened after the Holocaust. He did not know what had happened to his family. Only after the Holocaust, when he returned to the area in Hungary where he had lived, did he discover that he had lost his wife, his children, his parents, and other very, very dear relatives. His whole world had collapsed, shattered. Imagine—what do you do now? Your whole

23:31 life, your whole world. At that time, in those days, the Klausenberger Rebbe, the Sanzer Rebbe, came to the area. He was a renowned Rebbe who had himself endured the most terrible hardships of the Holocaust and had lost his wife and all eleven of his children. He was a very well-known figure, a holy man, a tzaddik. It was Rosh Chodesh—I do not remember exactly. It was right after the war, perhaps Rosh Chodesh Tammuz or Av, around that time, in the summer of 5705. It was Rosh Chodesh. He gathered all the Jews in the area. He stood on a raised place and began to speak. He said, “Jews, we have lost everything, but they did not succeed in taking our faith from us. They will not succeed in taking our joy from us. Those are the only things we have left. Hold on tight; do not fall into despair. We choose to begin life anew. Do not sink into depression; do not sink into despair. Rebuild—rebuild your families. Marry again, have children, raise families, make new lives.” That Rosh Chodesh, he led Shacharis. My grandfather would recount this event weeping, with tears in his eyes. That Rosh Chodesh, there were hundreds of Jews—or tens, or hundreds of Jews—all of them broken. After everything they had been through, they had barely managed to save their own lives. The terrible sights they had seen were still before their eyes; it had all happened so recently. “We davened Shacharis. We said Hallel with the Klausenberger Rebbe,” he would say. “That Hallel I will never forget for the rest of my life. All my life I have longed for it. If only one day I could say even one verse of Hallel with the same faith, the same joy, the same feeling with which we said Hallel that day.” That is the Jewish people. That is the secret of the deep joy of the second Tablets.

25:52 The Tablets of Yom Kippur—that is Shemini Atzeres. The great joy a Jew feels on Shemini Atzeres is specifically the joy of Simchas Torah, after Yom Kippur. On Shavuos, everything was wonderful for the Jewish people. We had seen miracles and wonders, the Exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the sea. The people were at the height of holiness. We received a wonderful gift: the giving of the Torah. Everything was a gift we received. There was no breaking here, no struggle, no process of emerging from darkness. This was joy that had an explanation, joy over what we had received from above. But after everything the Jewish people went through with the sin of the Golden Calf, despite all they had been through, they got back on their feet and stood strong. They did not despair. On the contrary, they did teshuvah and stood with complete confidence that Hashem would forgive them. And after all they did during those forty days from Rosh Chodesh Elul, the days of forgiveness and mercy, when Yom Kippur arrived with the second Tablets, that was precisely what brought the greatest joy. This is joy that comes out of darkness. That joy is the greatest joy of all: turning darkness into light, turning bitterness into sweetness. That is, in essence, the story of Simchas Torah. It is very interesting that we celebrate Simchas Torah after the Simchas Beis Hashoeivah. After all, of the Simchas Beis Hashoeivah they say, “Whoever did not see the joy of the Simchas Beis Hashoeivah never saw joy in his life.” What were they rejoicing over? Pouring water. They would take water, bring it to the altar, and pour it out, and from that came the greatest joy. It is hard to understand. On Pesach, on Shavuos, with all the offerings, they would pour wine—the wine libation. During the wine libation, the Leviim would sing, but we never saw such tremendous joy. What, specifically, did they pour on Sukkos? Water. And from that water—“You shall draw water with joy from the wellsprings of salvation”—came such joy that they danced for entire nights in the Beis Hamikdash,

28:12 And why is the Simchas Beis Hashoevah the greatest joy? The answer is: on the contrary, that is precisely the point. Wine brings a joy of sweetness, a joy with flavor. Water has no flavor. Precisely because water is plain water, without any flavor, a Jew—even when he does not understand and does not feel—is still connected. The water of a spring. A Jew has a spring within his soul, a pure spring, “a well of living waters, flowing from Lebanon.” These are the pure waters of the soul, the deep, essential connection of Jews to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That joy—no one can take it from us. This is the very test we are in the midst of now. In these days, the joyous days of Sukkos and Simchas Torah, as we enter a new year, each and every one of us needs to draw on that joy despite the difficulty: the joy of simply being Jews, the joy of knowing that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with us even in these moments. And indeed, it is precisely then that His love is much deeper. Very soon we will see it. We have already seen it in many events over the course of the year. We need to be immersed in this great joy, because this joy breaks through every boundary. This joy will break through the barrier of the darkness of galus that we are in now. That is the secret of joy. As the Baal Shem Tov said, “A Jew does not wait for Hashem to do good for him and then become happy.” It works exactly the other way around. A Jew becomes happy, and then his joy brings joy Above, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu shows him a joyful, smiling face. That is how it works. This well-known teaching of the Baal Shem Tov is based on the Zohar. “Hashem is your shadow”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is like a shadow. Just as a shadow does what a person does,

30:26 the shadow mirrors our actions and movements, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so to speak, mirrors our movements. When a Jew down here has a joyful face, he arouses joy Above. The Zohar, Parshas Tetzaveh, says: “Come and see.” The higher world is like the lower world, like our world. If a person here in this world has a radiant face, if he is joyful, he brings joy to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that joy breaks through harsh judgments, barriers and decrees, and brings light, joy and kindness into the world. So let’s take this advice and put it to use. This is our strength. This is the tremendous strength of the Jewish people. This is what our enemies want to break in us. Beyond everything they have done, beyond all the hardest things we have gone through this year—so much blood, so much suffering, so much pain, so much grief—what they really want is to crush our people, to break our spirit. And that, no one will break. The spirit of a Jew is strong, steadfast—a spirit of joy, of trust, of faith, of connection. And on Simchas Torah especially, that spirit breaks through every boundary. This year, with the Torah scroll we will hold close in our arms, we will rejoice with the Torah scroll and rejoice with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and we are certain that Hakadosh Boruch Hu will rejoice with us. “The time of our rejoicing,” Chassidus explains, means a double joy: “our rejoicing” is in the plural. It is our joy in Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s joy with us. With this joy we will welcome the new year, enter the new year, and “Yaakov went on his way.” May we merit, with this joy, a blessed year, a year of light. May we merit to see the situation turned completely around this year. In contrast to what we went through last Simchas Torah, surely this Simchas Torah we

32:28 will merit to have Hakadosh Boruch Hu shine the light of His countenance upon us and grant us a blessed year, a joyful year, a year of light, a year of Geulah. May we all merit to go to the complete Geulah with Moshiach Tzidkeinu, with the greatest dance of all—the dance of the Geulah.