Celebrating Simchat Torah

Each week of the year, another of the Torah’s 54 parshat is studied, publicly read in the synagogue, and its lessons applied to daily living. Thus the Jew lives with the Torah: the Five Books of Moses are his calendar, their chapters and verses marking, defining, molding and inspiring the weeks and days of his year.

Simchat Torah is the day on which we conclude the annual Torah-reading cycle. On this day, we read the Torah section of Vezot Haberachah and immediately begin a new Torah-reading cycle with the reading of the first chapter of Genesis.

Simchat Torah means “the rejoicing of the Torah,” for the Torah rejoices on this day. The Torah is the stuff of the Jew’s life: his link to his Creator, the very purpose of his existence. But the Jew is no less crucial to the Torah than the Torah is to the Jew—it is he and she who devote their lives to its study, teaching and practice; he and she who carry its wisdom to all peoples of the earth; he and she who translate its precepts and ideals into concrete reality.

So if we rejoice in the Torah on Simchat Torah, lifting its holy scrolls into our arms and filling the synagogue with song and dance, the Torah, too, rejoices in us on this day. The Torah, too, wishes to dance, but, lacking the physical apparatus to do so, it employs the body of the Jew. On Simchat Torah, the Jew becomes the dancing feet of the Torah.
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This article originally appeared on Chabad.org.