Parashas V’Zos HaBracha, Sefer Devarim
Visit Israel and you’ll see them dancing. Standing under a chuppa, they hold the precious scroll close as a mother holds a baby. Their eyes close with a soft smile, faces radiant. They shift their weight in quick, rhythmic succession, back and forth in a gentle, energetic freefall of limbs and music.
It’s more than a dance. It’s an embrace, the most profound of celebrations. A hachnasas sefer Torah, the celebration carrying a new Torah scroll to a synagogue, is probably happening somewhere in the world right now.
It’s more than a dance. It’s an embrace, the most profound of celebrations. A hachnasas sefer Torah, the celebration carrying a new Torah scroll to a synagogue, is probably happening somewhere in the world right now.
What do you call a Jew’s relationship with the Torah? One word: love.
Love stories can be complex, but one thing is certain. Love transcends the rational. Love may be a choice, and may be a verb, but once it has begun, love shoots roots into places where speech barely penetrates. That’s what you will see on their faces, the people holding the Torah scrolls and dancing at a hachnasas sefer Torah. You will see a pleasure that words can barely describe, a connection that transcends and yet somehow is also intrinsic to the foundation of all times and places. I always cry.
The Torah has been called the Jews’ portable homeland. Indeed, the world has swallowed us whole yet the buoy of Torah continues to bare us up despite their cruelest intentions. History sees nations come and nations go. The Jews continue to dance with their precious scrolls.
The Torah is completed in synagogues around the world on the annual holiday of Simchas Torah. As the fifty-four Torah portions that are read, one or two every Shabbos, come to a close with Parashas V’Zos HaBracha, the synagogue erupts in dancing. Because Jews don’t finish reading and learning and living the Torah. Jews celebrate another milestone, and yet another, year after year after year, because our generations continue and the Torah continues with us. We are entangled, meshed together in an inseparable web of soul and ink and parchment and meaning. We dance. We sing. We hold the Torah scrolls close to our chests.
Simchas Torah is a holiday of profound joy, like every hachnasas sefer Torah, not because joy is a commandment, although it is, but because we are overjoyed to be commanded. The Torah is precious because it is His love letter to us. He spoke to us at Sinai and the conversation never ended. It never will:
“Many waters cannot extinguish the fire of this love, nor rivers wash it away.” (Shir HaShirim-Song of Songs 8:7) “Love is Torah.” (Talmud Sotah 21)
Based on Parasha U’Likcha by Rabbi Moshe Grylak
Written for http://www.arachimusa.org/
Thanks to Gary VanDenBerg for use of his magnificent photo.
