Parashat Shmini Atzeret - Simchat Torah: When the Beginning Is Not a Beginning

There is a fairly common practice among politicians. When a politician is elected and comes to power, they often feel the need to undo what their predecessor did, especially when that predecessor belonged to another political party. Decisions are reversed, projects are abandoned, and an attempt is made to draw a clear line between what came before and what comes next. As if beginning something new required erasing everything that came before and starting from scratch.

This year, we return to Bereshit. Once again, the beginning. Once again, the very first word: Bereshit — “In the beginning” — as if it were possible to begin all over again.

But there is a fundamental difference between beginning again and starting from scratch. Because we do not start from scratch.

This Simchat Torah arrives, in the Hebrew calendar, together with the third anniversary of October 7. Three years ago, also on Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, celebration and horror became forever intertwined in our memory. And we can no longer read one without remembering the other. Not because joy has ceased to exist. But because it can no longer be innocent.

We continue reading. We continue asking questions. We continue discussing the same texts that generations before us discussed. But we are no longer exactly the same readers.

There are words in the Torah that have become heavier. There are others that we need to look at again from a different place. And there are questions that once seemed philosophical but today have an unbearably concrete dimension.

What do we do with a text that speaks to us about humanity and violence, about brothers who turn against one another, about strangers who must be welcomed and included among us, about memory and responsibility, about life and death, about ethics and morality, about what we must choose for good, and about what our parents and teachers must transmit to us through the example of their own lives?

Simchat Torah does not ask us to celebrate as though everything were fine. It asks something more difficult of us: not to abandon joy even when we know that the world is not fine.

Dancing with the Torah does not mean closing our eyes to reality. It can mean, precisely, affirming that we still want to be a people who read, who ask questions, who debate, and who transmit. A people who do not surrender our words to hatred, and who must not allow violence or resentment to have the final word about who we are.

And perhaps we must not allow our disappointments, our losses, or our bad decisions to have the final word either.

Something happened this week that made me think about this in an unexpected way.

On a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, a violent incident inside the cabin put the lives of all the passengers at risk. The pilot was injured but managed to open the cockpit door, and passengers, crew members, and other pilots who happened to be on board intervened to regain control of the aircraft and bring it to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia. The investigation into what happened is continuing, although Israel’s Defense Ministry described the incident as a jihadist terrorist attack.

I don’t think I’m the only one who noticed the significance of the flight number. The number is 1073 — three years since October 7. And then there are the letters: FZ. Free Zion.

Maybe they’re just coincidences.

We do not yet know how that investigation will end. But I am left with one image.

In the midst of danger, people intervened to save lives. Ordinary people, confronted with an extraordinary situation, did what they could to allow life to continue. Perhaps that, too, is a way of beginning again.

We do not control everything that happens. We cannot erase what happened. But we can decide what we do with what happened.

In just a few moments, we will read Vezot Habrajah, the final parashah of the Torah. The Torah ends there, with the death of Moses. Moses, knowing that he is about to die, blesses Israel. He does not leave an explanation of how the story will end. He does not enter the land he had seen from afar. That is how the five books of the Torah end.

 He blesses. Then he dies. The people mourn him. And then they continue with another leader, Joshua.

But we do not end. Because at the very moment we finish reading, we open the book again. We close Devarim and return to Bereshit.

Once again:

“In the beginning…”

And there is something deeply significant about this: It is not merely a matter of the calendar. It is a gesture that generations of Jews have repeated again and again: in the communities of Europe, in the shtetls, in the synagogues of Sepharad, and in so many places where Jewish life managed to endure throughout the centuries.

Generations who also knew loss, exile, expulsion, persecution, and pogroms. And yet, they reached the end of the Torah and began again. Not because they had forgotten what they had lived through. Not because the world was a safe place. But because they had to keep reading.

They had to preserve the traditions that had united us for centuries, the central language and the different languages that connected us and allowed us to continue studying, transmitting, and building an identity that survived circumstances that often seemed determined to destroy it.

There is something deeply Jewish in the way we move through time. Finishing does not necessarily mean concluding. And beginning again does not mean starting from scratch.

We return to Bereshit carrying Vezot Habrajah with us. We carry Moses, his blessings, his death, and all that he was unable to complete. We carry our own losses and our own questions. We carry what we still do not understand. And we open the book once again.

One generation ends and another continues. One voice falls silent, and the text remains open. And we discover that continuity does not mean repeating exactly what came before. It means receiving what has been handed down to us and interpreting it again from the place where we stand.

We are human beings, fallible, made of flesh and blood. Moses, the great teacher, was too.

He had successes and failures. He experienced moments of greatness and moments of frustration. He transmitted hopes that were fulfilled, but also disappointments.

Perhaps this is because a life is not measured only by what a person was able to accomplish, or the failures and mistakes, but also by what they leave in the hands of those who come after them.

And here, for me, we find the deeper meaning of Shemini Atzeret which comes right before Simchat Torah.

It always explained that atzeret means “assembly” or “gathering.” But Rashi offers another reading, based on the root atzarti — “I have held you back” or “I have kept you with me.”

Rashi compares Shemini Atzeret to a king who invites his children to a banquet for several days. When the time comes for them to leave, he says:

“My children, please stay with me one more day. It is so difficult for me to part with you.”

That is why Atzeret is not merely the final day of the festivals. It is the day that interrupts the succession of festivals so that we can stop and take in what has happened during them.

There is an enormous difference between experiencing something and allowing ourselves to linger within what we have experienced.

Throughout the month of Tishrei, we have spoken.

We have asked for forgiveness. We have confessed. We have asked for life, memory, rain, and protection. We have asked God to remember us and inscribe us in the Book of Life.

We have lived through a month of event after event, prayer after prayer, gathering after gathering:

Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. Sukkot. And then, for a moment, time stops pushing us toward whatever comes next. And when that succession is interrupted, something appears that constant movement does not allow us to see.

Where are we? What have we done? What has happened to us? What was real? What was simply intensity? And what of all this will remain when the festival is over?

There is an image in the Haftarah for Shemini Atzeret that, for me, completes this movement. The Haftarah is from Melakhim Alef, 1 Kings 8:54–66, and tells of King Solomon blessing the people of Israel at the conclusion of the dedication of the First Temple in Jerusalem.

Solomon finishes his great prayer. The Temple has been dedicated. The people have prayed, listened, and celebrated. And then the eighth day arrives.

The text says:

בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי שִׁלַּח אֶת־הָעָם

“On the eighth day, he sent the people away.”

And then:

וַיֵּלְכוּ לְאָהֳלֵיהֶם שְׂמֵחִים וְטוֹבֵי לֵב

“And they went to their homes, joyful and glad of heart.”

I like to think that hidden there is one of the deepest teachings of Shemini Atzeret: The place of a sacred experience is not our final destination.

We have to go home. Back to our routines. Back to our unfinished business. Back to our difficulties. Back to the things that were there before Tishrei began and that will still be there when Tishrei is over.

But we return different. We return after having lived. After having listened. After having remembered. After having cried, and also after having celebrated. After having finished one reading and opened the book again.

Perhaps that is what it means to begin again. One generation ends. Another continues. One voice falls silent. The text remains open. And we return to Bereshit.

We begin again together. Because it is always easier to do so together, as a community, united.

And we open the book once again. Not because we have forgotten what happened. Not because we have all the answers. But because we still choose to keep asking questions.

Shabbat Shalom Umevorach, ve-Chag Sameach.

Rabbi Gustavo Geier