Shabbat Message from Rabbi Forman 10/13/06

"Turn it and turn it again for everything is contained within." (Pirke Avot 5:25)

As the festival of Sukkot draws to a close , we turn our attention to Torah and the celebration of Simchat Torah. Sukkot reminds us of the frailty of life, the seasons' never-ending rotation, that all that lives must some day die....

On Sukkot we read the words of Ecclesiastes who painfully reminds us that "the eye is never filled with seeing nor the ear with hearing. What has been is that which will be. What has been done is that which will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun." (Eccl. 1:8-9) With its emphasis on the fall harvest, Sukkot is a time for us to reflect on how we fill our days -- knowing that we, too, are part of the unending cycle of life.

Simchat Torah echoes the idea that the rotation of the seasons of the year is ongoing. Summer turns to fall and then to winter and spring and back again to summer. So, too, do we turn the Torah again and again. As a scroll made of many pieces of parchment sewn together, the Torah is literally turned each week to a new section. This Friday night is both Shabbat and Simchat Torah. At our Family Service we will read from the last bit of parchment, the last column, and the last words. Seemingly, the Torah is at its end. But the Torah does not end there. It continues. How? Where?

No sooner do we conclude reading from the book of Deuteronomy than we turn the scroll back to its beginning. We read from the opening passages of Genesis and the story of creation, as we ourselves enact the very process of creating a new beginning for our cycle of Torah reading. Have we been here before, done this before, read this before? Yes. And the words are the same every year. But as we turn it, again and again, we discover new insights into our traditions and new meanings for ourselves. Everything IS contained within.