Sukkot / Simhat Torah 5773: I Love Torah

Yes, I do.  I love Torah.
If you know me at all, or if you peruse my writings over the years in this blog, you know I am not a Torah-thumping fundamentalist.  But I do love Torah.

That makes Simhat Torah one of my favorite holidays.

So, why do I love Torah so much?
Here's my big 5 countdown:

5:  Genesis/Breishit 9:16-17 -- "And the rainbow will be in the cloud, and I [God] will see it, to remember an eternal covenant between God and every living being of all flesh that is on the earth."  And God said to Noah: "This is the sign of the covenant that I've established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."    Torah teaches us that every human being stands before God on equal footing . . . no human soul is holier than any other or is created any differently than any other.  All living creatures are treasured as creations of God.

4:  Genesis/Breishit 11:5-8 -- "And Adonay went down to see the city and the tower that the children of humankind had built.  And Adonay said, "Here, they're one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they've begun to do.  And now there will be no challenge to anything they initiate together.  Come, let's go down and babble their language so they won't understand each other's language.  And Adonay scattered them from there over the face of the earth. . . "  God blesses our diversity, our different approaches to life and expects us to exercise our intellectual and spiritual and creative gifts.  God does not intend for us to be homogenous and of one opinion or one outlook.  (Which is a good thing considering the "two Jews three opinions" principle!)

3:  Genesis/Breishit 15: 9-10, 12-14, 17-18 -- And God said to Avram, "Take a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old she-goat and a three-year-old ram and a dove and a pigeon for Me.  And he took all of these for God and split
 them in the middle and set each half opposite its other half . . . And the sun was about to set, and a slumber came over Avram . . . and God said to Avram, "You shall know that your seed will be alien in a land that is not theirs, and they will serve them, and they will degrade them four hundred  years.  But I'll judge the nation they will serve, and after that they'll go out with much property. . . . and the sun was setting, and there was darkness, and here was an oven of smoke, and a flame of fire that went between the pieces.  In that day, God made a covenant with Avram, saying, "I've given this land to your seed . . . . "  This takes a little "unpacking."  Scholars of ancient near eastern history tell us that when neighboring local landowners made a treaty, they would take an animal, cut it in half, spread the two halves apart, and then each landowner would walk between the parts of the severed animal.  This was ancient near eastern choreography expressing: "May my fate be like that of this severed animal if I do not keep up my part of our treaty."  With that insight, the flame of fire passing between the pieces becomes a breathtaking divine declaration and commitment to Avram:  May My fate, God is saying, be like that of these animals, if I do not keep My part of this covenant with you and your descendants, Avram."  God is with us for the duration.  

2:  Exodus/Sh'mot 4:25 -- And Zipporah took a flint and cut her son's foreskin.... This is part of one of the most abstruse and puzzling passages in the Torah, but the one clear element of the story is that Zipporah, Moses' wife, took the transmission of the covenant into her own hands by ritually circumcising their infant son.  Women's spiritual insight and religious initiatives are just as much a part of our tradition as are the spiritual insights and religious initiatives of the men of our communities.

1:  Exodus/Sh'mot 24:7 -- And Moses took the scroll of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, "We will do everything that Adonay has spoken, and we will obey/listen."    This is the moment we made the transition from a collection of individuals and extended families to a people, to a community.  In an unprecedented (and yet-to-be-reproduced) moment of consensus, our entire people committed to the covenant offered to us by God at Sinai.  נעשה / na'aseh:  we will do it.  נשמע / nishma: we will hear/internalize the terms of the brit/covenant.  And here we are, three thousand years later, celebrating the eternity of our covenant with God.  Wow.

Ok.  I admit, there are way more than 5 reasons I love Torah . . . maybe I'll share another 5 with you next year in my pre-Simhat Torah blog . . . but there is so much to celebrate in our Torah, and I can't wait to celebrate it with you.  The wisdom, the perspective, the compassion, the eternal values, the roots of community, our very identity . . . it's all in our Torah.