There's a quiet engine running inside every human being. It runs when we choose a career, a city, a partner. It runs hardest when something breaks. It keeps asking one question: why?
We need reasons the way we need air. A reason tells us the world has order. If something happened for a reason, then it could have been prevented, and maybe it won't happen again. A reason gives us back a little control.
But there's a catch nobody warns us about. The more we chase reasons, the more frustrated we become, because we rarely find one that fully satisfies. Our minds are limited, our emotions cloud things, and our view of the world is narrow. We search, we come up short, and we feel even more lost.
A few months ago I read a book by a Shaolin monk. An interviewer asked him how he finds happiness. He said that was the wrong question. He isn't searching for happiness. He's searching for peace.
I sat with that for a long time, and I think I finally get it. When happiness depends on finding a reason, it's always one unanswered question from collapsing. Peace doesn't need a reason. Peace comes from purpose.
The Rambam teaches that a mitzvah done with simcha is a complete mitzvah. But what do you do when you're not happy? Maybe the Rambam isn't asking us to manufacture a feeling. Maybe he's asking us to find the purpose, and let the simcha grow out of that.
This Simchas Torah marks three years since October 7th. Three years since thousands were massacred, tortured, and kidnapped. Three years of wounds, many of them invisible.
And for three years, the engine has been running. It's this government. It's the one before it. It's the army, the intelligence, him, her. Then there's the spiritual version, which sounds gentler: it happened because we were divided, because there was baseless hatred among us, and look how it brought us together.
There's truth in the unity we found, and I'm grateful for it. But try saying that to a mother who buried her son. Try saying it to someone who came back from captivity, or someone who still wakes up at night hearing what they heard that morning. No unity, no lesson, no spiritual accounting will ever be a good enough reason for what was done to them.
When Iyov lost everything, his friends came with explanations. God was angry at them for it. They spoke about God's justice and weren't right. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can say is: I don't know why.
If you're one of the people carrying this in your body or your heart, please hear this: you don't owe anyone a reason, and you don't need to accept one. What happened to you wasn't a lesson. It was evil, and it was wrong.
If you watched from a distance, notice the gap. Those of us on the outside often need reasons so we can feel safe. Those on the inside usually know that reasons don't heal anything. What heals is presence, and purpose.
Anger that finds a reason usually wants revenge. Every kid knows this. Someone takes your toy, you grab it back or hit him harder, and you're still empty afterward. I'm not against justice. Justice matters. But after it's done, the question remains: what did I grow? What purpose did I bring?
Reb Shlomo Carlebach used to ask what the difference is between Shavuos and Simchas Torah. On Shavuos we stay up all night learning. We open the Gemara, the Chumash, the commentaries, and search for reasons in every word.
On Simchas Torah, the Torah stays rolled up. Nobody reads it, nobody explains it. We just hug it and dance. The scholar and the Jew who can't read a word of Hebrew hold the same scroll, and for that moment they're equal.
We need both. But Simchas Torah teaches the harder lesson. There are moments when understanding isn't the point. You just hold on.
For two thousand years we were in exile, and now we're home. Home has come with a price. For nearly four thousand years, since Avraham stood against the whole world and believed in One God, we've known that when you deal with the Infinite, you don't always get an explanation. Sometimes all you get is a purpose. You live by it and build with it, and it becomes who you are.
In the crazy jungle of life, we'll never understand everything. But we can choose purpose.
So this Simchas Torah, if you're dancing, dance. If you can't dance this year, just hold the Torah. Hug it and know: this is mine. It was my grandfather's and his grandfather's, and it will be my children's and grandchildren's. Shalom, peace, is one of God's names. Maybe that peace is waiting for us in the hug, not in the answers.
Reasons we may never find.
Purpose we can hold today.
Shabbat Shalom & Chag Sameach Rav Shlomo