Rabbi's Message

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman
Read about the Rabbi
October 2003

A challenging spiritual journey

This time of year presents not only an exhausting marathon for rabbis, but a challenging spiritual journey of reflection, repentance, renewal, and celebration. We move from one Jewish holiday to another every week, each one with a different focus and a different message. But the culmination of all of our spiritual work during this time comes when we dance with the Torah on Simhat Torah.

On Rosh Hashanah, we herald in the new Jewish year. We join in community to welcome in a sweet new year and blow the shofar to wake us up to the fact that we have only one life to live and we need to do it right now, because there is no dress rehearsal.

We only dance with the Torah after we have completed our cycle, recognizing that life sits precariously on a pin and only by God's grace have we made it to where we are.

During Yom Kippur, we reflect and repent for all of our transgressions. We purify our minds and souls of all our weaknesses, faults, and fears. We end Yom Kippur with great hopes for the coming year and a clean slate upon which to pursue our future.
With an elevated heart and sensitivity about our surroundings we quickly move into the holiday of Sukkot, where we experience the fragility of all life, particularly our own. We build a sukkah, eat in it, and may even sleep in it, with a sense of adventure mixed with a fear of how nature can threaten our safety and comfort.

We end Sukkot first with the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. On Shemini Atzeret, we pray for rain in Israel and for God to save us - to bring us nearer to salvation.

With our redemption at hand, we then begin the holiday of Simhat Torah - when we dance with the Torah into the night, celebrating the completion of our annual cycle of reading the Torah and begin again, without even a breath in between.

All of these holidays are linked and our mood flows from one to the next as we move from celebration to self-reflection to self-awareness back to an even higher level of celebration. We don't dance with the Torah on Rosh Hashanah, unlike the secular New Year when we party hard. We also don't dance with the Torah at the end of Yom Kippur, when we have presumably been written and sealed in the Book of Life for another year. We only dance with the Torah after we have completed our cycle, recognizing that life sits precariously on a pin and only by God's grace have we made it to where we are.

We dance with the Torah in celebration of life.

Indeed, the agricultural roots of Simhat Torah rest on the fact that the rainy season in Israel starts at this time. Ecstatic dancing must have been spontaneous amongst the ancient Israelites once the first rains of the season arrived. After five or more months with no precipitation, except for the nighttime dew, the arrival of rain meant that God was going to provide for the people for another year.

Imagine our spiritual journey also as time spent in the dry wilderness; unsure of whether we are on the right path or whether God will provide. Then imagine, after weeks of self-reflection and self-awareness, the realization that we ARE on the right path. That "We are loved by an Unending Love; that somehow, life has been made possible and that we are the recipients of that gift; that our lives are worthy and meaningful.

Doesn't it make you want to get up and dance?

Come join us on Saturday night, October 18 at 7:00 pm. We will be dancing, singing, (and even drinking a little) in celebration of the fact that we are alive.

Wishing you sweetness and renewal in the year ahead.

-- Rabbi Elyse