Simchat Torah
Dancing! Singing! Epic Torah readings! Simchat Torah is time of mystical, transcendent fun. Uncover the deepest meanings of Simchat Torah and Shemini Atzeret.
Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah 2023: Friday Evening, October 6-8
The joy of Sukkot reaches its peak during its final days. At the conclusion of the Torah reading cycle, we dance with the Torah during Hakafot. These autumn festivals are a celebration of reuniting with the Creator and transcending our personal boundaries. During Simchat Torah, dancing is a form of repentance — we return to our purest selves through uninhibited joy. Discover the mystical, Kabbalistic meaning of these joyous days in the Meaningful Life Center’s archives.
MP3 Class: Sukkot and Simchat Torah – Joy
60 Days: A Spiritual Guide to the High Holidays
Partake in a Transformative 60 DAY JOURNEY Toward a Better Life
Bring the High Holidays Home: Join our virtual 60 Day Journey and experience transformation on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Discover tools to revitalize and invigorate your High Holidays with daily emails, providing inspirational thoughts and personal exercises.
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60 Days: A Spiritual Guide to the High Holidays
Prepare for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot with insights from spiritual healer and renowned teacher Rabbi Simon Jacobson. Discover tools to revitalize and invigorate your High Holiday experience.
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Dancing Particles
Your soul has a mission whose contract has been renewed. This is your personal mission statement – the reason you are here on earth.
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The Liberating Power of Dance
Dance manifests our natural internal movement. When we freeze up, we muzzle and shackle our inner spirit. When we break out into an unbridled dance, with our hands waving free and our bodies unchained, our inherent inner rhythm is liberated and comes gushing forth.
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60 Days Daily Audio Journey
Follow along with the Meaningful Life Center’s NEW daily audio series by Rabbi Simon Jacobson: 60 Day Journey Toward Hope, Renewal, and Joy.
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Dance Away
Is dancing on Simchat Torah in oblivion of the world a form of escapism, or is it in fact a different means of experiencing reality?
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The Four Species: Four Mysteries of King Solomon Explained
“And you shall take for yourselves… the splendid fruit of a tree, fronds of dates, the branch of a thick-leafed tree and aravot of the river.” King Solomon, the Midrash tells us, was mystified by this verse.
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Simchat Torah: Through Water and Fire
The joy and the tears all dissolved into one transcendent dance; a dance that captured the essence of joy and pain, ecstasy and agony – the indestructible core of life itself.
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A Non-Parting Party
Our sages explain the significance of Shemini Atzeret. Shemini Atzeret is the one-day festival that immediately follows the seven-day festival of Sukkot.
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Simchat-Torah: From Chickens to Vegetables
As we move right along from fauna to flora, from swirling chickens before Yom Kippur to thrusting shrubs on Sukkot, the holidays have an organic nature…
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Absorbing The Joy: The Significance of Shemini Atzeret
Sukkot is followed by a day in which our joy reaches its peak and the holiday that preceded this day is internalized.
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Simchat Torah: Absolute Passion in the Face of Complacency
As we enter the climax of the High Holiday season we are challenged to ask ourselves: What do we stand for, what do we fight for? Movingly discussed here…
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Moses’ Choice
Moses’ breaking of the tablets was an act endorsed by G-d. How is the breaking of the covenant between G-d and the Jewish people an achievement of Moses?
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Torah In The Winter
On Simchat Torah we read Vezot Haberachah in conclusion of the annual Torah-reading cycle. It is the day of rejoicing the Torah, but not of receiving it.
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The Marriage Contract
Breaking the tablets symbolized a severing of the relationship between G-d and the Jewish people, an act which constitutes Moses’ greatest achievement
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A Shattering Reunion
It is told of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev that one year after Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, he stayed up all night waiting to put on tefillin.
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Dancing with the Torah
Dancing with the Torah caused the Torah to become deeply embedded into my life, part of the weave and warp of my being.
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Daughters Near and Far: The Atzeret of Sukkot
Our receiving of the Torah on Shavuot is the “Atzeret” of our liberation from slavery seven weeks earlier.
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Fire: A Narrative by Rabbi Pinchas Reizes of Shklov
Rabbi Pinchas Reizes of Shklov tells a story of a miracle on Simchat Torah.
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Intuition: The Romantic Art of Repenting
For it is with our observance of the customs that we express the depth of our love for G-d. The biblical commandments might be compared to the explicitly expressed desires between two people bound in marriage.
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Michoel’s Merchandise
At a Simchat Torah gathering, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem told his disciples this story.
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Scrolled: Equality on Simchat Torah
On Simchat Torah we are all equal: equal in our inability to fathom the essence of Torah, and equal in our intrinsic and inviolable connection to it.
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The Marriage Contract: Moses’ Loyalty to the Jewish People
The Torah considers Moses’ highest virtue: his unequivocal loyalty to the Jewish people, a loyalty even greater than his loyalty to the Torah.
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Shemini Atzeret: Breakthrough
Go deeper into your experience of concluding this year’s Torah reading cycle and beginning anew with ideas and stories from The Meaningful Life Center.
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Erev Sukkot: Energize Your Sukkot
Enhance your stay in your sukkah with ideas and stories from The Meaningful Life Center.
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Shemini Atzeret: My Child: Let Us Not Part
Minds separate us, but our legs unite us. We dance as one.
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Simchat Torah: Through Water and Fire
The story of the young man has taught me much: even in the saddest of times, even when all seems lost, with a little joy, a little dance, everything can change.
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Shemini Atzeret: The World and You
We dwell in Sukkot, made of vegetation of the world, we pray and commit to improve and refine the nations of the world, we dance and celebrate in public, we engage, connect and unite with others.
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Simchat Torah: Do You Want to Dance?
To enter a higher reality we have a narrow passage called “ayin.” To enter this passage you must first shed layers of ego and self-interest, recognizing that there is a reality that precedes you and is concealed from view; a reality beyond your grasp and of another dimension.
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Noach: My Child: Let Us Not Part
The third installment in the series ‘Letters to My Child.’ After the busyness of the Hebrew month Tishrei we are given a final day to say goodbye.
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Simchat Torah: Bizarre Journeys
Wherever you go, as difficult as the journey may be it is all for a higher purpose: to redeem the Divine sparks that can only be found in that dark place.
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Can A Maskil Dance?
The ultimate purpose, is not to be smart and profound, but to be G-dly. Being sensitive and refined is not an end in itself but to be G-dly.
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Simchat Torah: Rise Up
The most adverse conditions throughout history have resulted in some of the greatest achievements in Jewish scholarship.
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