Unleashing Joy: Exploring Simchat Torah
Some things are worth doing every year: acknowledging birthdays and anniversaries, visiting a favorite vacation spot, celebrating Messiah’s birth and resurrection, attending a family reunion, or watching a favorite movie. What tops your do-it-every-year list?
For the observant Jewish community, reading through the Torah is a must-do annual event. Every year we read from Genesis to Deuteronomy in 54 portions (called parashiot), one each Shabbat[1] of the year. This annual cycle concludes and begins anew with the celebration of Simchat Torah (Rejoicing in Torah). This year Simchat Torah begins in Israel with Shemini Atzeret[2] at sundown on Thursday October 5. Outside of Israel it is celebrated the next day beginning at sundown on October 6.
Simchat Torah is not listed as one of Israel’s “appointed times” but is celebrated in conjunction with one that is. Shemini Atzeret, the “Eighth Day Gathering” immediately follows the seven-day feast of Sukkot concluding the biblical feasts of the seventh month (Yom T’ruah,[3] Yom Kippur,[4] and Sukkot;[5] see Leviticus 23:23-36). This final “Eighth Day Gathering” is an invitation from God to simply enjoy a day of rest and acceptance in His presence.
The Simchat Torah celebration recalls a joyous wedding and Israel’s covenantal relationship with God. At both the evening and morning services the Torah is taken from the ark and carried around the sanctuary seven times accompanied by joy-filled dancing and singing. (In a traditional Jewish wedding the bride encircles her groom seven times.) The evening service concludes the annual cycle with the reading of Deuteronomy 33–34. The morning service celebrates the cycle’s renewal with the re-reading of Deuteronomy 33–34 followed immediately by the reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3.
As the final verses of Deuteronomy are read everyone responds with “chazak, chazak, v’nitzchazaik” “be strong, be strong, and may we be strengthened!” And so, the cycle continues unbroken, year to year, generation to generation.
For Israel the reading of Torah and fidelity to God’s instructions was key to their remaining in the Land and experiencing God’s blessings therein. With echoes of Adam and Eve’s choice in the Garden, Moses said:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).[6]
Yet, Moses himself told his people that they would not, and could not, read and obey God’s instructions until they experienced a profound change of heart. Moses said, “Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4). Despite all God had done to reveal Himself to them through the Exodus and wilderness wanderings their hearts were unchanged. The same “yetzer” (inclination) that doomed humanity in the flood and thereafter (Genesis 6:5, 8:21) doomed Israel to failure as well (Deuteronomy 31:21).
The traditional joyful exuberance of Simchat Torah belies this sad reality. Many hold onto the false hope that they can keep God’s instruction meriting God’s blessing. They are blind to their inability, and to their need for God’s supernatural intervention. This blindness afflicts Jews and Gentiles alike.
But Moses also pointed Israel to their only hope – God’s promise to restore His scattered people back to the Land, and to accomplish the needed heart change. “Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). In context, “so that you may live” means “so that you may live in the Land experiencing God’s blessings.”
As Simchat Torah approaches join us in praying that this year many Jewish people will awaken to their need and see God’s provision in the New Covenant that changes our hearts for good.
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jeremiah 31:31–33).
Written by Dan, Life in Messiah Board Chair
How about you? How do you celebrate the fact we have God-breathed Scriptures accessible to us?
Would you pray for the Jewish people this season? Pray they would see the Jewish Messiah Jesus in the Scriptures this year.
Want to read another blog on Simchat Torah? Rejoicing in the One Moses Wrote About.
Endnotes:
[1] Shabbat is the Hebrew word for Sabbath. Beginning after sundown each Friday, observant Jews refrain from work in keeping with the fourth commandment in Exodus 20. Shabbat also is a day of gathering in synagogue for prayer and Scripture reading.
[2] For more on Shemini Atzeret, see https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-is-shemini-atzeret/.
[3] The biblical name, Feast of (sounding of) Trumpets today is commonly referred to as Rosh Hashanah, or Head of the Year. See https://www.lifeinmessiah.org/blog/pardon-me-2 for LIFE’s recent blog on this holiday.
[4] See https://www.lifeinmessiah.org/blog/upside-down-grace for the recent Day of Atonement blog.
[5] Learn more about the Feast of Tabernacles at https://www.lifeinmessiah.org/feasts-sukkot.
[6] Biblical citations are from NASB95.