Each week I receive, via email, a newsletter called “Shabbat Shalom”, published by a liberal Religious Zionist movement in Israel called “Oz VeShalom”. Today I would like to share with you a contribution from a writer named Dahlia Marcus that appears in this week’s edition, which is devoted to Simchat Torah. I have translated this from the original Hebrew.
The piece opens with two Biblical verses:
Gather the people – the men, the women, and the children… in order that they may listen and in order that they may learn…(Deuteronomy 31:12)
“Let me hear your voice, for your voice is pleasant and your appearance is lovely” (Song of Songs 2:14)
I well remember a Simchat Torah celebration that I attended many years ago. A grandmother of one of the prayer leaders was there that evening. This woman, who made aliyah to Israel in the fifties from South Africa, grasped the Torah scroll with such profound feeling and kissed the Torah cover with tears flowing down her face. She explained to me that her late husband served as a synagogue official for decades but she herself never touched a Torah scroll. She was never privileged to come near it. I will never forget the experience of meeting this woman. Over the years I’ve met other mothers, grandmothers and aunts of all ages and backgrounds who had never touched a Torah scroll. Their faces were filled with light when they held the Torah scroll for the very first time.
Simchat Torah is a Festival that reminds us that the Torah belongs to everyone. It belongs to whoever chooses to love it, to study it, and to turn it into a light that illuminates our path and quenches our thirst to understand.
Dahlia Marcus is an Israeli writer. This excerpt is from her book Ba-zman- Travels Through the Calendar by an Israeli Jew Published by Yediot Sefarim, Israel
Shabbat Shalom and Moadim LeSimcha
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