Simchat Torah - sundown Sept. 25, 2013

Simchat Torah: Just You and Me

Amidst all the dancing and revelry, we realize just how alone we are with God.

by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld

Simchat Torah is given a curious description in Torah: “On the eighth day shall be a holy convocation to you… it is a holding back (atzeret)” (Leviticus 23:36). What in the world is a “holding back?”

The Midrash explains: God says to Israel, “I hold you back unto Me.” It is as a king who invites his children to a feast for a number of days. When it is time for them to depart, he says, “My sons, please remain with me one more day. Your departure is difficult for me.” We have just gone through a Rosh Hashanah, a Yom Kippur, and a Sukkot together. I have judged you, forgiven you, and shaded you in My protective Clouds. And I don’t want to let go of you so soon. Stay for just one more day.

Why do we celebrate the Torah on this day?

There is thus something very intimate about Simchat Torah. After celebrating so many other festive occasions, God asks for one last day – just us alone. No special activities – no shofar, no judgment, no sukkah, no lulav. Let’s put it all aside and spend one more today together – just Me and you. In fact, the earlier holidays related to all mankind: On the High Holidays God judges the entire world. On Sukkot we would bring Temple sacrifices for the well-being of all the nations. But not Simchat Torah. God asks for just a little quiet time together. No one else; just the two of us.

How do we celebrate our special day with God? By taking His special gift to the Jewish people – by holding and dancing with His Torah.

But why do we celebrate the Torah on this day? Didn’t we receive the Torah on the holiday of Shavuot – which commemorates the Revelation at Mount Sinai? Why the opposite end of the year?

The answer is that we lost the Torah we received on Shavuot. After the Revelation, Moses remained on the mountain for 40 days as God taught him the Torah he was to teach the nation. He descended the mountain only to find a fraction of the nation dancing around a Golden Calf – with most of the people indifferent to the tragic affair. Moses smashed the Tablets, annulling our first “marriage” with God. We had lost the Torah we had only so recently acquired; we had failed to live up to its ideals.

Moses spent the next 40 days beseeching God not to wipe out the nation utterly. He then spent another 40 days on Mount Sinai receiving the Second Tablets. He returned at last on Yom Kippur, when God forgave the nation entirely. This is the Torah we celebrate on Simchat Torah.

There are thus two dates in the Jewish calendar in which we celebrate the Torah – Shavuot and Simchat Torah. On Shavuot we celebrate the Torah we had but lost. Why celebrate what we lost? Because the awe-inspiring event of the Revelation at Sinai was one the world would never forget. God descended onto Mount Sinai in all His glory. The world, all of creation stood frozen before God’s overwhelming presence. And Israel was terrified, shaken to the core. We begged Moses to act as intermediary between God and us, “for who of all flesh hears the voice of the Living God speaking from the fire like us and lives?” (Deut. 5:23). It was an overawing experience, one which we as a nation as well as the world over would never forget.

Today many people celebrate Shavuot by staying up the night of the holiday studying Torah. Who can sleep the night before such an earth-shattering event? But not once on Shavuot do we ask ourselves if we are keeping the Torah God gave us. For the Torah of Mount Sinai is not the Torah we have today. The Revelation was the greatest national event which ever occurred to us, but it was one we not able to live up to.

A Personal Torah

By contrast, on Simchat Torah we do not celebrate our national receiving of the Torah; we celebrate our personal one. God gave us the Second Tablets because He deemed us worthy of receiving them. He had just forgiven us on Yom Kippur and decided to take us anew. And we celebrate by each of us holding close that Torah God entrusted us with and dancing with it. And likewise every single member of the synagogue is called up to the Torah for the reading of a section.

Dancing in a crowd is actually a very personal experience.

Anyone who has experienced dancing in a crowd knows that it is actually a very personal experience. In spite of vast numbers of people surrounding you, you feel very alone. You lose yourself within a great moving mass of people, unaware of the individuals within the group and your location within it.

When we dance on Simchat Torah we celebrate our very personal connection to the Torah. We at once feel ourselves a part of the great body of Israel, yet at the same time we feel very alone with our God. This is not only the Torah of the nation of Israel; it is my own Torah. And each of us holds the Torah and celebrates just what God’s wisdom means to him personally. For everyone has his or her own perspective on God’s Torah. Everyone has his story, how the Torah has touched his life and how he has become who he is today.

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My grandfather’s family came to the United States from the Ukraine in the early 20^th century. He was one of 11 children in a very traditional family. They settled in Philadelphia. In a story repeated literally 2 million times, the children were sent off to public school and became “Americanized,” losing most of their religious observances in the process.

All except for my grandfather. Nearly 100 years ago, a local rabbi convinced his father to send his son Abraham to yeshiva in New York. Arriving as a teenager on the original Armistice Day of 1918, he attended what would later become Yeshiva University. He went on to earn rabbinic ordination – as did his son and grandsons after him.

Every one of us has his personal story, how he came to be who he is today and what the Torah means to him. For the Torah is the possession of all of us. No one has the monopoly on God’s wisdom. It is wisdom we can all study and grow from – and recognize its personal message to us. For when we dance on Simchat Torah, we celebrate the fact that we have been cleansed on Yom Kippur. We celebrate that God has once again accepted us. And we celebrate that the Torah is once again ours.

Wesbite: Aish.com

The Jewish Calendar - Holidays

The Jewish Calendar

BY STEPHEN J. EINSTEIN AND LYDIA KUKOFF

Jews often say: "The holidays are late this year" or "The holidays are early this year." In fact, the holidays never are early or late; they are always on time, according to the Jewish calendar.

Unlike the Gregorian (civil) calendar, which is based on the sun (solar), the Jewish calendar is based primarily on the moon (lunar), with periodic adjustments made to account for the differences between the solar and lunar cycles. 

Therefore, the Jewish calendar might be described as both solar and lunar. The moon takes an average of twenty-nine and one-half days to complete its cycle; twelve lunar months equal 354 days. A solar year is 365 1/4 days. 

There is a difference of eleven days per year. To ensure that the Jewish holidays always fall in the proper season, an extra month is added to the Hebrew calendar seven times out of every nineteen years. 

If this were not done, the fall harvest festival of Sukkot, for instance, would sometimes be celebrated in the summer, or the spring holiday of Passover would sometimes occur in the winter.

Jewish days are reckoned from sunset to sunset rather than from dawn or midnight. The basis for this is biblical. In the story of Creation (Genesis 1), each day concludes with the phrase: "And there was evening and there was morning. . ." 

Since evening is mentioned first, the ancient rabbis concluded that in a day evening precedes morning.

The list of the Hebrew months (below) and the holidays that occur during these months also indicates the corresponding secular months.



For the counting of months, Nisan--the month that begins spring--is considered the first. However, the Jewishyear is reckoned from the month of Tishri--the month that begins autumn. This would seem to be the superimposition of one calendar system upon another, which took place during the Babylonian Exile (sixth pre-Christian century).

According to Jewish tradition, history is reckoned from the time of Creation; Jewish years, therefore, are numbered from then. For instance, Israel declared its independence on 5 Iyar 5708 (corresponding to May 14, 1948). The year 5708 (and every Jewish year) was figured by commencing the count from the beginning of Genesis.

Christian custom has been to divide history into two periods: before the time of Jesus (called B.C. = before Christ) and after Jesus' birth (called A.D. = anno Domini = in the year of the Lord). Jewish books generally refer to these periods as B.C.E. (before the common era) and C.E. (of the common era).

The subject of the calendar is rather complex. We have, therefore, touched only its broadest outlines.

Taken from: http://www.reformjudaism.org/jewish-calendar

To Dance Again: Second Hakafot Around Israel

To Dance Again: Second Hakafot Around Israel

To dance in celebration of the Torah, and then to dance again: the People of Israel were out in force Monday night for Second Hakafot.
 

By Hana Levi Julian, Israel National News

First Publish: 10/8/2012

Second Hakafot in Talmon

Michal Avior, Matzpit

 

To dance in celebration of the Torah, and then to dance again: the People of Israel were out in force Monday night for Second Hakafot.

Israelis danced at locations all around the country to join together with Jews in the diaspora who had only just begun to observe the Simchat Torah holiday.

The "Second Hakafot" event marks the conclusion of the holiday of Simchat Torah and Sukkot in Israel, and is a tradition that is held to show solidarity with Jews in the diaspora, who celebrate two days of the holiday, with Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah observed as two separate holidays. The two are celebrated as one in the Holy Land. It is also an opportunity to dance to the sounds of musical instruments, forbidden on the holiday itself.

In Jerusalem celebrations were held all over the city. Thousands participated in the Second Hakafot at Liberty Bell Park, led by the Israel's Chief Rabbis, Rabbi Yona Metzger and Rishon LeZion Rabbi Shlomo Amar, and with President Shimon Peres as a special guest. The main event was sponsored for the 31st time by philanthropist Eugen Gluck, a New York-based Holocaust survivor who supports many projects in Israel, including the Talmudic Garden in Beit El.

Similar observances were held in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square and by the budding Torah community in Jaffa (Yafo) in Kfar Chabad as well as elsewhere around the country. In the northern Negev community of Arad, numerous diverse synagogue groups sent representatives to take the stage and lead the joyous dancing in the city's Kiryat HaOmanim.

 

In Samaria (Shomron), Second Hakafot took place in the Jewish communities of Yakir and Shaarei Tikvah, as well as in the community of Givat Assaf - whose continued existence is threatened by the Supreme Court - next to the town of Beit El, and elsewhere.

 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/160629

 

Simchat Torah

Simchat Torah is a celebration symbolizing the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, and the beginning of a new cycle. Simchat Torah is a part of the Biblical Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret which follows immediately after the festival of Sukkot in the month of Tishrei that is in mid-September to early October as per the Gregorian calendar. Simchat Torah means "rejoicing with the torah". The holiday of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, falls on the Hebrew calendar dates of 22-23 Tishrei-Shemini Atzeret on the former date, Simchat Torah on the latter. Keeping this in view this year in 2012, Simchat Torah will fall on October 9. Simchat Torah Celebration The celebration of Simchat Torah takes place in the synagogue during evening and morning. In many Conservative groups, this is the only time of year on which the Torah scrolls are taken out of the ark and read at night. In the morning, the last parashah of Deuteronomy and the first parashah of Genesis are been read in the synagogue. When the ark is opened, all the worshippers leave their seats to dance and sing with all the Torah scrolls in a joyous celebration that lasts for several hours. The morning service is also uniquely characterized by the calling up of each male member especially in orthodox congregations of the congregation for an aliyah, whereas for children there is a special aliyah.In the 20th century, Simchat Torah became a symbol of Jewish identity especially for the Jews of the Soviet Union. http://www.365celebration.com/simchat-torah