The Essence of Simchat Torah

Simchat Torah, which marks the end of the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings and the beginning of the new cycle, is a joyous holiday that celebrates the Jewish love of Torah and study.

Marking the end of the Sukkot festival, it is a celebration of our beloved Torah and all that She generates for us, her inheritors. She reveals the nature of God, creation of the world, and formation of our people, from liberation in Egypt to the revelation at Sinai. Since the destruction of the Holy Temple and our exile to far-off lands, the Torah has remained central and enduring, for She exists beyond time itself. Torah, since Her beginning at Sinai and travels to the Holy Land, has been the very core of our peoplehood and Covenant with God. She is the very ‘heart’ of our tradition, as She teaches in Torah, since the last letter is a Lamed and the first letter is Vet, spelling the word Lev, meaning heart. Her secret message is that She represents the Love of the Holy One.

Reading Torah provides not only stories and the history of how we began and who we are as a people, but many secrets. Our sages teach that we read Her on four levels represented by the letters that spell the word Orchard, or PARDES. These four levels are the plain story line, the hints and allusions, the moral, legal, and psychological, and lastly, kabbalistic mysteries. Each approach reveals deeper and deeper explanations and potential meaning. The Torah guides, teaches, models and enlightens every aspect of our psycho-spiritual life. 

Distilled into a myriad of possible interpretations, the flow of wisdom is exponential. Beginning with the Mishnah, almost 2000 years ago, each generation has expanded and deepened how we understand the literal and metaphorical language of this precious Hebrew. Levels upon levels of discourse, exposition, and reinterpretation has created the ultimate gift to each one of us, the gift that keeps on giving.

Proverbs offers an unusual way to relate to Torah. “I am wisdom, I was with God from the beginning before anything was created, even before earth … like a child, I was God’s daily delight.” The Torah, with its wondrous pathways and innovative teachings, is truly God’s plaything and muse. Like the chicken and the egg, it’s hard to know what came first. Then Proverbs offers another explanation, that “She is a Tree of Life …” and in “holding fast to Her brings happiness.” Torah is wisdom, a young child, a bride, the female expression of nurturance and guidance, and like a tree, rooted in the earth, spreading her branches throughout time. Torah is all this and more. For She is an unending Shefa, a flow, from God, constantly nourishing, feeding, and sustaining her people.

Just as we experience life and change, each year we see Torah with different eyes and hear with different ears. 

And so, the rabbis have us reread Her over and over again. Designed to be read every Shabbat over the course of one year, we end on Simchat Torah, when we dance with the holy scrolls, and then start all over again, discovering, despite the many times we’ve heard her, new vistas and new understandings. Just as we experience life and change, each year we see Torah with different eyes and hear with different ears. Our own life experience opens us to receive her in totally different ways, year after year.

Torah for the mystics was a midnight encounter. They would wake at the witching hour, like a betrothed, frolic with Her, study and encounter Her intimate truths. In fact, in the last chapter of Torah, which we read on Simchat Torah, it says “Torah is an inheritance,” using the word, Morashah, but the sages say we can read it as M’orasah, meaning betrothed. Torah is the bride, embraced by us all, as we dance with her seven times on this holiday, each circuit representing multiple symbols – seven days of creation, the seven Ushpizim, ancestors of the past, and the seven circuits at the wedding before Chuppah. 

In the Jewish calendar this is a glorious Simcha, a joyous celebration that lifts us by embracing the Holy Scroll and dancing with Her. Torah will live beyond time continually showering us with God’s truth and God’s love, feeding both our minds and our spirits.

Eva Robbins is a rabbi, cantor, artist and the author of “Spiritual Surgery: A Journey of Healing Mind, Body and Spirit.”