Commentary for Simchat Torah

On Simchat Torah we read the end of the Torah, which coincides with the end of Moses’ life. The final chapter functions as a eulogy of sorts for Moses. We are told that his life’s work lives on in the form of Joshua being prepared to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, and then that he died, that he was greatly missed by all of Israel, and finally we are given a few verses praising his greatness and his special place on our history.

 

The final three verses of the Torah read, “Never again has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord had known face to face. As evidenced by all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh and all his courtiers and all his land. And by all the great might and awesome power that Moses performed before the eyes of all Israel (Deut. 34:10-12).”

 

At first glance, the final verse is a little troubling. Moses dies now, outside of the Promised Land because not being allowed to the Promised Land is his punishment for not following God’s instructions in Numbers 20:7-13, creating a situation where an observer could have come to the conclusion that it was Moses, not God, who had the power to bring forth water from a rock. While Deut 34:11 makes it clear that it is referring to wondrous acts that “the Lord sent him to perform,” 34:12 simply refers to other amazing displays of power that “Moses performed” without explicitly making clear that it was from God, not Moses, that the power truly came. How could it be that in God’s own eulogy of Moses, God makes the very same mistake Moses was punished for making?

 

God does not make mistakes, so therefore a new interpretation is needed. Rashi provides this interpretation, saying that we should take the verses at their face value. 34:12 is, indeed talking about actions that Moses took, but the statement is not blasphemous because it is referring to regular human things that Moses did without any help from God. Rashi equates “great might,” which in the Hebrew literally translates to “strong hand” as carrying the Two Tablets down Mount Sinai. They were made of stone, so they were very heavy, and yet Moses willed himself to carrying them down the mountain, showing his strength of will and his determination not to disrespect this holy gift from God by putting it down on the dirty ground for even a moment. This amount of respect for God and God’s gifts to us is an example we should all follow.

 

Rashi identifies the “awesome power that Moses performed before the eyes of all Israeli” as throwing those same onto the ground, shattering them, when he came down the mountain only to be greeted by the sight of the Israelites abandoning God and worshipping the golden calf instead. By throwing the tablets down, Moses showed the Israelites that this was an extremely grave matter and they all needed to immediately stop and listen to him. This is the final lesson we learn from Moses in the Torah: It does not matter how often a leader talks with God or how many great deeds a leader is credited with; a leader who cannot effectively communicate with and influence the actions of the people is no leader at all.

Commentary for Simchat Torah

In many ways, Simchat Torah is a very strange holiday. For one thing, its festivities are not in any way biblically ordained. While we are commanded to rejoice in the Torah, the idea of having a special day where we dance with the Torah and celebrate finishing one cycle of reading and starting a new one was invented by the Rabbis and added on to the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. Once Diaspora communities sprung up and started to celebrate two days of holidays instead of one in order to make sure they covered their bases and were celebrating at the right time, Simchat Torah was split off from Shemini Atzeret and rather than celebrate both parts of the holidays for two straight days, we split them off and do Shemini Atzeret stuff (such as Yizkor and the prayer for rain) on the first day and do Simchat Torah stuff (dancing, finishing, and restarting the Torah) on the second day. This, in turn, has lead to a very unique situation where Jews in Israel have adopted a custom developed specifically for the Diaspora, going out and dancing with the Torah on what would be the beginning of Simchat Torah in the Diaspora, at which time the combined Simchat Torah/Shemini Atzeret in Israel would have already ended.

Simchat Torah also has some parts to it that appear a little strange conceptually. For example, the big moment of the holiday is when we finish reading the last parshah in the Torah, and then go start reading from the beginning again to symbolize that there is no end to what we can learn from the Torah. But then for the haftarah we read the beginning of Joshua, which picks up right where the end of the Torah leaves off. If the point of the holiday is that we are going back to the beginning of the Torah, why are we reading the part of the story that comes right after the end?

In discussing the idea of finishing the Torah and then immediately starting from the beginning again, much has been made of the fact that the last letter of the Torah, lamed, followed by the first letter of the Torah, bet, brought together in this never-ending chain of reading the Torah, spell the Hebrew word “leiv,” meaning “heart,” which symbolizes God’s eternal love for us, and our love for God and the Torah.

Much less has been made of the fact that the last letter of the Torah, lamed, followed by the first letter of the book of Joshua, vav, spells the Hebrew word “lo,” meaning “to him.” The first two verses of the book of Joshua firmly establish that the mantle of leadership, and with it the story of the Jewish People, has now been passed to him. The first verse in the much later Mishnah tractate Pirkei Avot similarly establishes the passing down of the mantle of the Torah and the spiritual leadership of the Jewish People from Moses to Joshua to the succeeding generations.

On Simchat Torah we celebrate and show our dedication to both of these concepts. We sing and dance with the Torah, and upon completing it we immediately start to read it again, showing the idea of leiv: our eternal and continuous love for God and this precious gift of Torah that God has given us. And in doing so, we- us here today- welcome and celebrate the idea of lo: that the spiritual future of the Jewish People and the responsibility to safeguard the Torah lies in our hands.

Commentary for Simchat Torah

Simchat Torah has many unique customs. It is the only time of the year where the Priestly Blessing is recited during Shacharit instead of during Musaf (the reason for this is that it is forbidden to perform the Priestly Blessing while inebriated, and many responsible adults consume alcohol during Hakafot, which take place after Shacharit but before Musaf, so we move the Priestly Blessing to Shacharit so that the Cohanim can drink as much as they want during Hakafot). There is also a custom to bother the chazzan while he or she is chanting the repetition of the Musaf Amidah, taking advantage of the fact that chazzan cannot move during the repetition, but the congregants can because they have already finished their Amidah (though at some point in our past, one Beth Ahm Rabbi cleverly instituted the practice of the heicha Kedushah in which the congregation and chazzan recites the first two blessings of the Amidah out loud, then the congregation joins in for the Kedushah, after which the chazzan continues silently while the congregation goes back and starts the Amidah silently from the beginning, allowing the chazzan to finish before the congregation does).

It is also the only time that we read from the Torah at night. The reason for this is because it is considered disrespectful to take the Torah out in the grandiose fashion that we do during prayers and then not read from it. When we take the Torah out of the ark, we do not just simply remove the scroll from a fancy closet. We read verses from the Torah about what would happen when the Ark of the Covenant, in which the Torah was kept, was being moved when the Israelites set out from their camp. We read verses from the Prophets and from Psalms proclaiming the greatness of the Torah and its Divine Author, and praising of those who hold fast to it. We parade it around the room so that everyone can touch it and feel close to it and show it the respect it is due. Then, after we are done reading from it, we make a show of dressing it up against, and do the whole thing in reverse. On Simchat Torah, we take this to a whole other level, with dancing and singing. How could we possibly go through all of this to take the Torah out and not read from it?

The Torah is not like other books, which we simply pull off of the shelf, read, enjoy for a bit, then put them back and forget about them. Even when we are done reading the Torah for now, we take its wisdom and values with us out into the world. We keep them on our minds night and day, whether sitting at home or going out into the wider world. We use them to inform our actions. When something is this important, how can we not make a big deal out of the simple act of taking it out or putting it away, and when something is this important, how could we possibly consider taking it out without reading it?

Commentary for Simchat Torah

Everyone knows the first verse of the Torah: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” What less people know is the that the first word in the Torah, “Bereshit,” can be turned into an acronym in Hebrew which reads “Bereshit Ra’ah Elokim She’Yisrael Yikablu Torah¬- In the beginning, God saw that Israel would accept the Torah.” And, of course, God turned out to be right. The Israelites did accept the Torah. But accepting the Torah comes with a lot of responsibilities.
Unfortunately, we often put most of our focus on the restrictive aspects of these responsibilities, and as a result, they feel like burdens. Fasting on Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av is hard and services on the High Holidays just take so long that we sometimes wish they were just over with already. Not eating foods that everyone else eats sometimes makes it hard to have a nice dinner out on the town with friends. Building a sukkah can be a laborious, time-consuming activity which is made even more frustrating by the fact that you know you will be spending the same amount of time taking it down in less than two weeks, and likely spending at least part of the intervening period having your dinner rained on. To prepare for Passover we clean our houses from top to bottom and bring up what amounts to an entirely new kitchen’s worth of pots, pans, and utensils just so we can entirely change our diet for a mere eight days.
So why do we continue to do all of these crazy things? Because it is our culture. It’s just what we Jews do. Our parents did it, and so did their parents and their parents’ parents all the way back to Sinai. It is the tradition of our ancestors that has been passed down to us. As it says in Deuteronomy 33:4 (probably the most well-known verse in the Deuteronomy portion of the Torah reading) “Moses commanded the Torah to us; it is an inheritance of the community of Jacob.” And so, as God foresaw, we accept the Torah as our heritage and we do these things… though when the time comes, we often do them with a grumble.
On Simchat Torah, we forget that grumble. Yes, High Holiday services might be long and fasting might be hard. Yes, building a sukkah and preparing our houses for Passover might be a lot of work for such a short period of time. Yes, matzah might taste yucky and bacon might look tasty… but isn’t it great that we have this rich culture that dates back thousands of years? That we have all of these unifying experiences that we can all relate to each other with? That we have these unique things that we do that allow us to stand up together as part of a group and say, “We do these things because we are Jews and this is what Jews do; from our ancestors to us to our descendents generations in the future, and we are proud of that!”
There is a big difference between accepting responsibility and enjoying responsibility. Throughout the year we often focus too much on just accepting our responsibilities as Jews, but on Simchat Torah we run and jump and dance and sing to show God and the rest of the world (or at least the neighbors) that we not only accept our responsibilities as Jews, but we enjoy them.