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By Rabbi Carl M. Perkins

“Yizkor, Shmini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah”
Shmini Atzeret 2005
October 25, 2005

Tomorrow is one of the strangest days in the Jewish calendar: Simchat Torah. It is strange because it is, on the one hand, a day of intense joy, intense excitement. We sing and dance with the torahs. Sometimes, we sing and dance until we’re so frenzied we don’t know which way is up. And yet, Simchat Torah is also a day on which the actual portions that we read from the Torah touch on a topic that is seemingly very far away from joy and festivity.

On Simchat Torah, we read the very end of the Sefer Torah, and then we wind it back to the beginning and read the very first chapter of Genesis. In that very last aliyah from the end of Deuteronomy, we read a very sad tale describing the death of Moses. “And Moses went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, … and the LORD showed him the whole land. … And the LORD said to him, ‘This is the land which [I promised] your offspring. I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there.’ And Moses, the servant of the LORD died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the LORD.”

What an odd story to read on such a happy day! We read not only of Moses’ death, but of his burial. And we also read of the Israelites’ mourning for their leader.

Why is this?

Now you might wonder, Why didn’t the rabbis decide to finish the Torah on, say, Hol Hamoed Sukkot, and allow us to begin the Torah on Simchat Torah itself? Then we wouldn’t have to read such a sad story, and we’d be able to start fresh, on a happy note.

But in fact, if you read the first chapter of Genesis, you realize that we can’t quite escape that theme. For with the creation of humankind we witness the creation of mortality. God always was, and he always will be. But human beings, who are created on the sixth day of creation, are brought into the world on a particular day, and—as we all know—they leave it on a particular day. Even though we don’t read chapter two of Genesis, that describes in detail Adam and Eve’s violation of God’s command, and their banishment from the Garden of Eden, we already know that they will not live forever. For no one does.

And so both the reading from Deuteronomy, in a very specific sense, and also the reading from Genesis, in a more universal sense, expose us to the great existential challenge of human beings: contending with our mortality.

Is this compatible with joy? Shouldn’t we be shielded from this truth on our happy holiday? Shouldn’t we just pretend that everything is hunky-dory? How is such an awareness compatible with joy?

The answer is, How could it be otherwise? Perhaps a joyous day is the best day to be reminded of the great frustrating quality of human beings: that we don’t live forever and neither do our loved ones.

In this sense, Simchat Torah simply extends the theme of Sukkot. On Sukkot, which is the happiest pilgrimage festival of the year, what do we do? We leave our homes and dwell in a fragile hut. What’s the point? That no matter how sheltered we may think we are, all we really have over our heads is the skhakh of the sukkah. The wind can blow the sukkah down. Even the lightest rain can send us running back to our homes. That’s how vulnerable we really are.

Life often seems incredibly unfair. It is. Or, more precisely, it is neither fair nor unfair. It isn’t an issue of fairness. We have only so long to live, and no longer. Every day is a gift. Whenever we die, it can feel unfair. Whenever our loved ones die, it can seem unfair. The problem remains and it will always remain, so long as we remain human.

So, how can we get through the day? How can we be hopeful at all?

That last aliyah in Deuteronomy begins with the death of Moses but it does not end with the death of Moses. After describing his death, burial and mourning, the text says, “Vayit’mu y’mei vchi evel Moshe.” “And the period of wailing and mourning for Moses came to an end.” As intense as is our mourning, eventually, it comes to an end.

And what about Moses? Well, although he was buried, his legacy remains alive and well. That legacy, the Torah, is the object of our love and devotion. That legacy is what we dance with on Simchat Torah. It’s through that legacy that Moses continues to live on.

Our task is to remember our loved ones, to allow their legacies to live on through us, by reflecting on their lives, and by dedicating ourselves to perpetuating the values they lived by. That is the true source of simcha. May we be privileged to rejoice in the Torah, and may we be privileged to rejoice in the memories of our loved ones. Amen.