The paired Jewish holidays of Shemini Hag’Atseret and Simchat Torah, which follow immediately after Sukkot being this evening. Shemini Hag’Atseret starts at sunset this evening (Monday 13 October), Simchat Torah starts at sunset tomorrow (Tuesday 14 October), and the celebrations end at nightfall the following evening (Wednesday 15 October).
The seven joyous days of Sukkot in the Jewish calendar are followed by these celebrations that mark the completion of one annual Torah reading cycle and the immediate beginning of the next Torah reading cycle.
Traditionally these are joyous milestones and they are marked with dancing with the Torah scrolls in seven circuits of the synagogue, known as hakafot, when the Torah scrolls are held aloft in procession. The celebrations include lighting candles each night, festive meals at both night and day and avoiding work. Among Reform Jews and in Israel, Simchat Torah is generally celebrated on the same day as Shemini Atzeret.
Sukkot, which finishes with these celebrations, is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Ingathering, and recalls the 40 years the fleeing slaves wandered in the desert, living in temporary shelters. Sukkot is also regarded as a harvest festival, marking the end of the agricultural year.
The Jewish calendar and the western secular calendar are calculated in different ways. But every Jew celebrating Simchat Torah will remember that the surprise attack launched from Gaza by Hamas two years ago on the morning of 7 October 2023 coincided with Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah two years ago fell between sunset on 6 October and nightfall on 7 October. A day that was meant to be filled with joy, singing and dancing became the darkest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Simchat Torah means ‘Rejoicing with the Torah’ and is meant to be a joyous holiday that celebrates the Jewish love of Torah and study – a day of exuberant celebration of Torah and its centrality to Jewish life.
But that joy is tempered this year with memories of the horrors of events two years ago and mixed anxieties and hopes now this year about the ceasefire in the Middle East, the release of the last remaining hostages and the bodies of those who did not survive, and anxiety too about finding a just, lasting and sustainable peace in the Middle East and an end to the cycle of violence that has continued not just for decades, but for generations and for centuries.
The rabbis understood that time is both cyclical and linear. Cosmic time has a linear quality in which God acts to redeem people in History. Our life span is also linear, we are born and one day we will die. But, life continues around us, history continues to unfold, even when we are no longer a part of it.
Time, however, also exists cyclically. The seasons and religious festivals come round and are repeated year after year. Regardless of what happens on the historical stage to us or to those we know and love, these cycles will continue. The moon will continue to mark our days, weeks and months, the sun and the rains will nourish our crops, and the Torah will continue to inspire, instruct and comfort generations year after year.
Simchat Torah marks the end of one cycle of Torah readings and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah readings. The concluding section of the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy (D’varim), is read, and immediately following that the opening section of Genesis (B’reishit) is read, representing this eternal cycle of living and our relationship with God.
To look at the Torah’s beginning immediately after its end presents an important perspective. By the end of veZot haBerakha (Deuteronomy 33: 1 to 34: 12), 613 commandments have been given and received, frameworks for every aspect of life have been outlined, and people have found themselves truly immersed in religious, moral and ethical issues.
But many people may find they have not made a connection between those issues and creation and the natural world. Reading about the prohibitions against charging interest and delaying payment to workers does not necessarily mesh in our with the creation of stars and planets. By the end of the cycle of readings, it may be easy to forget the beginning.
The reading on Simchat Torah is an opportunity to see Torah not simply as a book of diverse commandments, but as a unified framework for life that sees the earliest origins of the universe and our complex developments as humans as part of an entire system.
In its own subtle way, the reading of Simchat Torah highlights an important question: Do the scholars and adherents of the God’s law also genuinely see it embedded in God’s world? Indeed, can we properly study the laws and ideas of Torah without paying close attention to nature?
As one cycle of Torah reading ends with reading about the death of Moses, a new cycle begins immediately with reading about the days of Creation. Death and birth, ending and beginning, the cycle continues on for another year, and this is celebrated joyfully.
The highlight of Simchat Torah is the hakafot, held on both the eve and the morning of the festival, in which people process and dance with the Torah scrolls while circling round the synagogue seven times, singing and dancing but making sure that everyone who wants to is able to dance with a scroll. These celebrations are expected to be wholehearted and exuberant, and the effect is one that has been described as ‘holy pandemonium’.
It is a custom in many synagogues to invite specific members of the community who have been noteworthy for their contribution to community life in the past year to read the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Genesis. In many communities the remaining aliyot or calls to reading will be offered to as many people as possible, often needing the repetition of sections of the Creation story so that as many people as possible can take part. Simchat Torah is also the only time in the year when children are also called up to the Torah.
Despite the fragility we so often experience in life, Simchat Torah is a traditional celebration of the joy of living, of hope in which life continues. It celebrates our relationship with God, who looks to us to embrace all that life has to offer as we look to God to share it with us.
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