Simchat Torah

Simchat Torah
Rabbi Denise L. Eger

This week of Sukkot is filled with an opportunity to celebrate family and friends. Each day we are to welcome them to our Sukkah along with the ancestors of our people, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Leah, Joseph, Moses, Miriam, and Aaron, Hulda the prophetess, King David, Queen Esther and Deborah the Judge. We call this welcoming of the ancestors along with welcoming of our family and friends, Ushpezin. Each ancestor invoked brings their own special qualities to our sukkah and our lives with their special insights and unique heavenly energies.
They bring to our Sukkah values of leadership, hospitality, wisdom, and music. They bring to our Sukkah family caring and reminders of our ongoing covenant with the Holy One of Blessing.

The week culminates of course in the ultimate reminder of our covenantal relationship-Simchat Torah, the celebration of the annual cycle of reading Torah. This weekend we shall celebrate the Torah and its centrality in our lives by lifting it high on our shoulders and dancing and yes, reading from its passages. We begin the night with the last chapter of Deuteronomy and move immediately to the opening words of Genesis. In one moment we assert the never ending history and never ending covenantal promise we made a Sinai. In one moment we renew our people’s story. In one moment we end and begin the Torah reading cycle again to learn from its stories, morals, and ethics to guide us in the New Year. In one moment Moses looks out upon the Promised Land and the next God recreates the universe. Just as the Jewish people will recreate their world as the cross over the Jordan in a new way and the New Year has recreated and purified our souls.
The holiday of Sukkot with its emphasis on the celebration of the Fall Harvest and the abundance of joy and goodness brought to us by the Divine Holy One is emphasized in a different way on the last day of the week with Simchat Torah. We add to our bounty with the bounty we reap from Torah. This is the bounty of guidance and direction and mitzvot that help direct us to live lives of holiness as God intended for us to live.
On Yom Kippur we read, I am holy, so you be holy, I am Adonai Your God (Lev. 19:1). The holiday of Simchat Torah, of Rejoicing in the Torah emphasizes that the scroll of our people’s life and history and law helps us live holy lives.
I look forward to celebrating with all of you.
Rabbi Denise L. Eger