Simchat Torah: the enigmatic climax

Sadly post October 7 the combined festival of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah has lost some of its shine. However while for some there will again be terrible memories this year, Judaism has never allowed events however terrible to override the basic meaning and even celebration of our rituals – after all, to do so would hand our enemies a further victory,

So let us spend a few moments trying to understand the festival now upon us

Actually it is indeed an enigma. The expression Simchat Torah – the rejoicing of the Torah – would appear from one perspective to be the ultimate religious festival. For it is the day on which we celebrate the very essence of Jewish spirituality. Some will recall the way it was so in the darkest days of post war communist Russia when expressions of religion were subject to serious restriction and some how celebration of Simchat Torah at the Moscow Great Synagogue actually prevailed.

Yet this very occasion and the focal point of its celebrations, have no basis in the Torah itself. There are seven days of Succot – and they are only one of the many hundreds of sevens of significance in Judaism. There is also an eighth day of Shemini Atzeret – described by the sages as “regel bifnei atzmo”, a festival of its own – yet in some ways the climax of Succot. Despite the overwhelming significance of the number seven symbolising holiness amidst the ordinary, we easily accept an eighth over and above seven, because so often in our tradition, starting from brit milah, the covenant of Abraham so basic to Jewish continuity, seven plus one is the epitome of holiness. (In other contexts we also refer to 10 as a “davar shebikedusha – a matter of holiness”, again a seven plus figure.)

But a ninth day? And a day which doesn’t even feature in the Torah and of course is not observed in Israel? How often does nine appear as significant in our traditions? Even in the famous seder song “Who knows one?”, the author could not find a relevant religious tradition for the number nine, and settled for the natural birth cycle as the “nine” in the song.

Yet this festival which is purely a rabbinic institution, which by virtue of being the ninth does not fit the usual halachic patterns for special significance, is not just another day tagged onto an existing festival but has developed an amazing identity all of its own. An identity which since the era of the Gaonim and particularly under the influence of the 16th century kabbalists of Tzfat (foremost amongst whom was Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Arizal),  has also been transferred to the last day of the festivals, Shemini Atzeret,  in Israel itself.

And what an identity. It is the day when we conclude the annual cycle of reading the Torah and then immediately recommence the reading for we have no life without Torah. (But, that too is not a practice based on Torah authority – it is purely a custom that was not always universally practised as less than a millennium ago there were communities – and we are not talking outside the Orthodox framework – who practised a triennial cycle of Torah reading, completing it only over three years.) But that aside, like no other in our calendar it is a day of contrasts, featuring physicality and the sublime. 

At one level it has become a day of indulgence. Every community has a major feast, whether it be a daytime party to celebrate the Chatan Torah or the celebration that follows the hakafot of the previous evening. The extent to which excessive indulgence long ago became an intrinsic aspect of its celebration in some circles, is evident from the way that the Chafetz Chaim in Mishna Berurah found it necessary to devote an introduction to its laws (a rare such introduction to a chapter in that great halachic work) explaining why it is halachically wrong to sit down in the succah on Shemini Atzeret afternoon, to farewell the succah and greet Simchat Torah by excessive drinking. (Yes, that’s what he says!)

Yet despite the widespread frivolity and characteristic lack of orderliness which was even commented upon with both surprise and disdain by Samuel Pepys when he visited a London synagogue in October 1663, it is day compared by some to Yom Kippur itself. In the Chassidic world, recitation of key piyyutim (poetic insertions) of the Yamim Nora’im services, is an intrinsic part of the “hakafot” liturgy. The very concept of seven hakafot (circuits around the bimah or even the whole shule) with the Torah emulates the seven hakafot with the lulav on Hoshana Rabbah – itself seen by the kabbalists as a solemn day of atonement and perhaps even the climax of the High Holy Days as a whole. 

Perhaps the answer to the contradictions inherent in this day lies in the relationship between Simchat Torah and Shemini Atzeret that precedes it. The sages suggested that Shemini Atzeret serves as one extra day after the seven days of Succot when we consider and pray for the whole world – one extra day when the people of Israel forget the world around them to commune with God in solitary isolation from the 70 nations. 

Simchat Torah then follows naturally; we now focus upon that ultimate gift of God that made us a separate nation. And we remember that the Torah was not given to the angels – spiritual beings with no earthly inclinations. It was given to humans who live a physical lifestyle, whose physical genesis has its origins in the number nine as identified in the song referred to above, and for whom sanctification of physicality and even physical celebration is the ultimate purpose of life defined by the Torah. 

A chag sameach to all. 

Shabbat shalom,

Yossi

Yossi Aron OAM is The AJN’s religious affairs editor.