Simchat Torah: An Unfinished Story
Simchat Torah will never be the same. Three years after October 7, this day will always carry a sense of before and after. A day once associated with joy, dancing, and women’s hakafot is now also a time to contemplate the Jewish story in our world today, to honor the lives of those we lost, and to ensure that their devotion and legacy live on through us.
In some ways, this message is embedded in the very way we celebrate the day. On Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, we complete the annual reading of the Torah. Its final verses recount the death of Moshe, which raises the questions: If Moshe died before completing the Torah, who wrote its final verses? And, what can the account of Moshe’s death teach us about human mortality and legacy?
One answer, suggested in Talmud Bava Batra, is that Moshe’s disciple Yehoshua completed the Torah. This touches on a deeper idea about Torah and human mortality: No single person, not even Moshe, the greatest prophet of all time, can encompass all of Torah’s truth and wisdom.
In a heartrending Talmudic account, Rabbi Eliezer expresses a similar sentiment on his deathbed, surrounded by his students. He places his arms over his heart and likens himself to a Torah scroll that is being rolled up, never to be opened again. He then laments how much Torah he still wished to learn and how little of his vast knowledge he had managed to impart to his students. Of course, his Torah continues to endure through the pages of the Talmud. Yet his words convey a profound truth: Torah is larger than any one person’s lifetime, just as the Jewish people’s story is greater than any one generation.”
Moshe and Rabbi Eliezer remind us that while we must strive to fulfill our individual potential, we are also part of the much larger, unfolding story of the Jewish people. As Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirkei Avot: “It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
On Simchat Torah, we do not only finish the Torah; we immediately begin reading it anew. Completing and beginning the Torah on the very Hebrew date on which we lost so many heroes and heroines in the Otef takes on new significance. Each life lost carries a legacy, a story cut tragically short. We are charged with remembering them and carrying forward their stories, their Torah, and their Zionism.
As Rabbi Sacks taught: “That bond of the generations we call covenant – the ethical connection between past and future – is what rescues life from tragedy, and death from having the final word.” Simchat Torah is now a day of unfinished stories, but also a day to celebrate the promise of new beginnings and the stories still waiting to unfold.
