Simchat Torah is unlike any other day of the Jewish year. We dance with the Torah, bless the children together under the Tallit, and give each member of the community an Aliyah. I know different shuls may have different minhagim. And I know that not everyone finds it easy to connect via dancing. Simchat Torah can feel, at times, a little Hefker. Some people are dancing. Others are already getting aliyot. Some attend a shiur. Others are making kiddush. Children are running around. No one seems to know exactly when Kol HaNearim will start. Like I said, Simchat Torah is different.
Growing up, there were two main things I looked forward to on Simchat Torah (other than, of course, the candy bags). Both may have been unique to our shul in Boston. One was the custom we kids had to find two men standing around during Hakafot and try to tie their Tallit strings together so that when their conversation ended and they went their separate ways their Tallitot would not go with them. The adults would shoo us away like flies, but we found great pleasure in trying to get away with this. Looking back now, I suspect there may have been a few men with a twinkle in their eye who pretended not to notice so that we could feel Simcha on this special day. The other thing we looked forward to, even though we didn't understand half the jokes, was the Meshugane Rebbe, a performance of two men in the community who did a routine from the Bimah in which one member pretended to be a visiting Rebbe who spoke only Yiddish, while the other acted as his translator. The translation never matched the Yiddish, I am told, and that's where all the jokes came from. I didn't catch the punchlines, but will never forget the image of all the grownups laughing hysterically in shul. As a kid, Simchat Torah was a clear message that Judaism is a religion of joy and that having fun, even in shul, was ok.
As I got older, however, and started to fall in love with learning Torah, I gained a very different appreciation for Simchat Torah, chaos and all. The idea of really rejoicing over the gift called Torah is something special if you allow yourself to get into it. It was most likely in Yeshiva that Hakafot really started being special. I know teenagers often have more energy than some of us adults, but letting the singing penetrate our souls, and using our entire body to celebrate Torah, brings a feeling that is hard to reach throughout the year.
But I still haven't gotten to the highlight of the day for me. My absolute #1 favorite moment of the Jewish year. And that is when we come back together to finish reading the Torah, and then open a 2nd Torah and start reading all over again from the beginning. It gets me every time. The special trop, the chuppah (or tallit) over the bimah, the fanfare given to Chatan Torah and Chatan Bereishit, the Chazak Chazak V'Nitchazek. I just find the entire symbolism of finishing and starting over again so powerful. Like the Hadran we recite when making a siyum, which pledges that we hope to return and learn this sefer again, Simchat Torah is a communal, even National, Siyum HaTorah, in which we celebrate everything we have learned this past year and pledge to keep learning even more deeply in the year to come.
There's a beautiful story brought down in the sefer Hegyonei Halacha (vol. 3) by Rav Yitzchak Mirsky. There was a man standing off to the side during Hakafot. The Rabbi approached him to invite him to join the dancing. But the man said, I didn't learn much Torah this year so what right so I have to dance with it like all of you? The Rabbi smiled and reminded the gentleman that there are two Chatanim on Simchat Torah. The Chatan Torah for finishing the Torah and the Chatan Breishit for starting it again. Even if you don't feel like the Chatan Torah who learned a lot, you can still be the Chatan Breishit who has hopes to start learning now.
This is why this moment is my Jewish highlight of the year. There are other great moments as well. Neilah of Yom Kippur, the Pesach Seder, Shavuot night... But on Simchat Torah, we remind ourselves that there is no such thing as ever finishing Torah, that each time we open it we find new meanings and new inspiration. So this year, try to lean into the chaos of Simchat Torah a little bit more. Tie someone's Tallit. Put a child on your shoulders and dance. And make sure to be there as we finish reading the Torah and immediately start again.
Chag Sameach
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