Absorbing The Joy
Throughout the year, the Jew lives with Torah. The Five
Books of Moses are his calendar, their 54 sections marking, defining, molding
and inspiring the fifty-odd weeks of his year
[1] : every week, another Torah section is studied, publicly read in the
synagogue on Shabbat, and its lessons applied to daily living.
Torah is the stuff of the Jew's life. It is his link to
his Creator, his national mandate, the purpose of his existence, the blueprint
for the perfection he yearns for. And the Jew is no less integral to the Torah:
it is he who devotes his life to its study, teaching and practice; who carries
its wisdom and ethos to all peoples of the earth; who translates its precepts
and ideals into concrete reality. Little wonder, then, that the most joyous
festival on the Jewish calendar, both for Torah and Jew, is the festival of
Shmini Atzeret/ Simchat Torah, when the annual Torah-reading cycle is concluded
and begun anew.
Shmini Atzeret means “the eighth day of ingathering” -
it is the festival which immediately follows the seven-day festival of Sukkot
(the significance of “ingathering” (“atzeret”) will be discussed later in
this essay). Simchat Torah means “the rejoicing of the Torah” and engenders
the dual meaning implicit in its name: it is the day when the people of Israel
rejoice in the Torah, lifting its holy scrolls into their arms and filling
the synagogues with song and dance; and it is the day on which the Torah rejoices
in Israel. The Torah, too, wishes to dance and, lacking the physical
means to do so, employs the body of the Jew - on Simchat Torah, the Jew becomes
the dancing feet of the Torah.
A Question
But why celebrate Simchat Torah on Shmini Atzeret, the
22nd (and 23rd) day(s) [2] of the month of Tishrei? As a
rule, the festivals of the Jewish calendar mark historical events which are
the source of their import and significance (e.g. the exodus from Egypt on
Passover, the creation of man on Rosh Hashanah). Accordingly, would it not
be more appropriate to rejoice over the Torah on Sivan 6th, the day in which
G-d revealed Himself to us at Mount Sinai and granted us the Torah as our
eternal heritage? Indeed, we mark that date with the festival of Shavuos,
a festival devoted to re-experiencing the revelation at Sinai and reiterating
our covenant with the Almighty forged by Torah and our pledge to observe and
study it. And yet, our joy with the Torah is reserved for the festival of
Shmini Atzeret - a date with no apparent historical connection to our relationship
with the Torah.
One might explain that “living with Torah” through the
annual reading cycle, studying it and implementing it in our daily lives,
is of greater significance than our original receiving of it at Sinai. But
why, indeed, conclude and begin the Torah on Shmini Atzeret? Why did Moses,
who established the Torah reading cycle, not schedule it to begin and end
on the festival of Shavuos?
Mirror Image
And yet, an examination of the nature and significance
of Shmini Atzeret reveals a close resemblance between it and the festival
of Shavuos - indeed, it can be said to be its calendar twin and alter ego.
Both are referred to by the Torah as days of “atzeret” (ingathering, assembly,
retention, absorption), and are the only two festivals to carry that distinctive
name. Both are one-day festivals which culminate a cycle of seven: Shmini
Atzeret immediately follows the seven days of Sukkot, while Shavuos closes
the seven week sefirah count begun by Passover.
The two atzeret festivals mirror each other across
the sphere of the yearly cycle. The Jewish year is framed by two key
months, Nissan and Tishrei, each of which is considered, in its own realm,
to be the “first” and “head” of the entire year. Nissan, the first month of
spring, marks the birth of the Jewish people; Nissan 15th is the date of the
Exodus, and opens a seven-day celebration of freedom, the festival of Passover.
Exactly six months later, on the 15th of Tishrei, begins the other seven-day
festival of the Jewish year, Sukkot. And, as explained above, both of these
seven-day festivals are capped by a one-day “atzeret” festival. (The only
break in the symmetry is the fact that Sukkot's atzeret is a literal
and contiguous eighth to its seven days, while Passover's atzeret is
a more distant “eighth,” culminating the 49 (7x7) day count initiated by Passover.)
What is an Atzeret?
What is an atzeret? Kabbalistic and chassidic
teaching explain it as the absorption and internalization of what was earlier
realized and expressed on a more external level. Atzeret is what
digestion is to eating, what assimilation is to study, what conception is
to marriage.
Our receiving of the Torah on Shavuos is the atzeret
of our liberation from bondage seven weeks earlier. On Passover we became
a free people - free of the taskmaster's whip, free of subjugation to the
most debased society on earth. But what is freedom? How is it to be
digested, internalized and applied to one's day-to-day existence? Is it freedom
from responsibility, from the burden of moral choices, from purpose and definition
to life? If such is freedom, then the most liberated creature on earth is...
the slave! (indeed, this was the freedom some Jews yearned for when they complained
to Moses “We remember the fish which we ate in Egypt, for free”
[3] ). Freedom is far too precious a commodity to be squandered as mere
physical liberty; as G-d told Moses, “When you take this nation out of Egypt,
you shall serve G-d at this mountain”
[4] - the purpose of the Exodus is that it lead to Sinai, to freedom
not only from the borders of geographical Egypt but from all constraints and
limitations [5] , physical or psychological, external or internal. Freedom from
doubt, freedom from hazard and inconsistency, freedom from servitude to one's
own base desires. Freedom which enables the soul to realize her full potential,
to experience her intrinsic bond to her essence and source, to actualize her
mission and purpose in being; in a word, the freedom to be fully and uninhibitedly
herself. The freedom embodied by Torah.
So upon receiving the gift of freedom on Nissan 15th we
embark on a 49-day process of absorbing and internalizing it - a process which
results in the atzeret of Shavuos. For seven weeks we labor to assimilate
the true, inner significance of the Exodus, to mature a circumstantial liberty
into a state of inherent freedom.
Then, six months later, come the festivals of Tishrei.
The Second Tablets
For life, as most anyone who has had that experience will
tell you, is not the unbroken progression of development and growth that we
plan it to be. Instead, there are blunders, failings and regressions.
Our life as a nation was no different: a few short weeks after we stood at
Sinai, beheld our Creator and attained the pinnacle of freedom and perfection,
we had reverted to the paganism of Egypt, and the Golden Calf was being worshiped
in the Jewish camp.
But descent generates the momentum for ascent, and failure
can be exploited to fuel the drive for rectification and beyond. This phenomenon
is referred to by the Torah as teshuvah (“return”): it is the thirst
that only one who is lost in the desert can experience, the longing for home
that only a wayward son can feel, the force that only a soul stretched to
the limit can rebound with. Thus, the debacle of the Golden Calf gave us Yom
Kippur - the holiest day of the year, and the source of even deeper connection
to Torah than the revelation at Sinai on Shavuos enabled.
Following the revelation at Sinai, G-d gave Moses the
Two Tablets of the Covenant, inscribed with the Ten Commandments which encapsulate
the entirety of Torah. Upon beholding Israel's violation of everything the
Tablets stood for, Moses “threw the Tablets from his hands and broke them
at the foot of the mountain.” [6] But out of the shattered tablets
and covenant was born a second set of tablets, embodying the Torah on a level
that the earlier, pre-descent set did not include. On the 10th of Tishrei,
observed ever since as Yom Kippur, G-d gave us the Second Tablets, conveying
to us a dimension of Torah that only the regenerative power of teshuvah
could evoke.
For to rebuild a shattered relationship, one must access
that part of it which was never damaged in the first place. On the most basic
level, the Torah is a set of Divinely ordained precepts, a list of dos and
don'ts which represent the manner in which the Creator of life desired that
it be lived; to act accordingly is to bind oneself to G-d as the instrument
of His will. But Torah is more then that. This is evidenced by the fact that
Torah itself provides the formula for teshuvah; in other words, also
one who has violated the Divine will, G-d forbid, has not placed himself outside
of the connection with the Almighty which Torah facilitates. Teshuvah
means that the Torah is the essence of an unconditional bond between man and
G-d - a bond which is expressed and actualized by our observance of the commandments
but not contingent upon it. So also one who has damaged the more tangible
element of his connection to G-d can reach deeper into Torah, to the very
heart of the relationship tapped by the hunger, the longing, the recoil of
teshuvah; he can experience its untarnished essence and rebuild it
anew.
So the First Tablets, which came at the end of a gradual
but uninterrupted process of self-refinement and self-perfection, expressed
only the “conventional” element of Torah - the obvious connection with G-d
achieved through the fulfillment of His will. The deeper function of Torah
remained locked in sublime latency: so long as we had not strayed from the
straight and truth path of life ordained by Torah, there was no need, and
no opportunity, to employ the power of teshuvah. One who sits by the
wellspring simply cannot experience the thirst of the desert wanderer; the
dutiful son who daily sees and serves his father cannot yearn with the intensity
of his renegade brother; the spiritually sated soul cannot generate the drive
and impulsion which agitates the soul tortured by its failings and inadequacies.
It is the Second Tablets, product of our teshuvah response to our first
(and prototypic [7] ) fall as a people, which embody the quintessence of Torah,
the bond that transcends its commandments and precepts.
Tishrei: Month and Moon
And Sukkot is the celebration of Yom Kippur. Teshuvah,
by its very nature, is an introverted affair: a soul secludes herself with
her G-d, anguishes over the distance she has created between them, and in
the depth of her anguish finds the redeeming element of her iniquities, the
power to repair and sublimate her defective past. The private and timorous
nature of teshuvah is demonstrated by the marked difference between
the manner in which we received the first and second Tablets. On Shavuos,
the entire people of Israel gathered around Mt. Sinai; there was thunder and
lightening, clouds of fire and smoke and the triumphant blast of the shofar
as the Almighty communicated the Ten Commandments amidst a tremendous display
of Divine power. But when Moses received the second set of Tablets on Yom
Kippur no one was there; G-d instructed that it be a silent and private affair,
as befitting the still, deep waters of teshuvah.
So Yom Kippur is hardly a time to express joy and celebration.
And yet, what greater joy can there be for the Jew than his joy in Torah -
specifically, the Torah of the Second Tablets - the substance of his eternal,
all-enduring bond with his Creator? And the nature of joy is that it refuses
to confine itself to the inner sanctum of the heart. It bursts its seams,
floods the body, sets the feet adance, and pours out the throat in song. Enter
Sukkot, “the season of our rejoicing.” Sukkot is the joy of Yom Kippur come
to light, the joy which the solemnity and innerness of the day kept contained
within.
The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, which means that
its months follow the phases of the moon. Moon and month
are born, grow, mature and dwindle together: each month
begins on the night of the new moon, progresses as the moon
fills out in the night sky, and its 15th, night of the full
moon, marks the month's apex and “fullness.” This is why
so many of the Jewish year's festivals and special days
fall on the 15th - it is the day on which the special quality
of that month is most expressed and manifest. The same is
true of the month of Tishrei: the teshuva of its
opening days (the “Ten Days of Repentance” from Rosh Hashanah
to Yom Kippur) finds manifest expression in the joy of Sukkot.
For seven days the joy mounts. But as with the freedom gained
on Passover, the teshuvah celebrated on Sukkot must
be absorbed and internalized: instead of remaining a once-a-year
experience, it must become part of our integral nature and
daily existence. So the seven-day festival is followed by
an atzeret - a day in which our joy with the essence
of Torah reaches its peak, and is immediately applied to
the cycle of our year-round lives.
Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber
