Is There Life After The Holidays?
Jan 29th, 2011 | By admin | Category: 2006-7, Archivesby Rabbi Yisrael Rutman
When all the prayers of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur have been said, the dancing of Simchat Torah is over, the sukkot taken down and stored away until next year, one is liable to think that it’s downhill from here. That what lies before us is a kind of gap in the Jewish year, a calendrical black hole, at least until the next red-letter days, of Chanukah.
For those whose Jewish observance is focused on the synagogue, that is surely the way things look. All the special prayers and communal gatherings that mark the Jewish festivals disappear now, and we return to the everyday text of Shmoneh Esrei and business as usual. Attendance at synagogue drops sharply, attention turns to other things, from the ominous realities of the Middle East to the somewhat less violent diversion of Monday Night Football.
But this is certainly not the way it should be. Anyone who takes to heart the celebration of Simchat Torah will understand that the joy of dancing with the Torah scroll in our arms is only meaningful if we take Torah study to our hearts from the day after Simchat Torah and onward. The reading of Zot Habracha (the Torah’s concluding portion) and Bereishit (the first one) on the same day signifies that as even as we complete one year of Torah, we embark on another year of Torah in a never-ending cycle of devotion to the words of God. Simchat Torah is not just an ending, it’s a beginning. Zot HaBracha (“This is the blessing that Moses blessed Israel”) is only a blessing if it is followed immediately by Bereishit (“In the beginning…”).
That mistaken view, that gives such undue primacy to the synagogue is not a new phenomenon. In the middle of the 19th century, when Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch came to assimilation-ravaged Frankfurt to rebuild Torah Judaism, one of the first lessons he taught was about the proper role of the synagogue in Jewish life. Following Rabbi Sadia Gaon’s famous dictum, that “the Jewish nation is a nation only through its Torah,” he made education, not synagogue-building, his primary concern. He bent his energies first to establishing a school (and a mikveh, since Frankfurt’s had been closed and filled in by the enemies of Torah who controlled the city’s Jewish council). “We need a school to bring up a generation of faithful Jews who will embrace Torah and make it their primary mission in life,” he wrote. “Only afterwards should a synagogue be built, for what good would there be in having a magnificent house of prayer if there are no young people to pray in it?” (Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, P. 219-220.)
The priorities are clearly outlined in Jewish tradition. As the Talmud Megillah (27a) rules, “it is permitted to convert a synagogue into a study hall, but not the other way around.” In keeping with the Talmud’s own principle that “we always ascend in holiness, never descend,” the implication is that the holiness of Torah study supersedes that of prayer. Indeed, the formalization of prayer did not come until the Second Temple era; but the commandment to study Torah came with the giving of the Torah itself. The mitzvah to pray three times a day in a minyan is of rabbinical origin; Torah study is a biblical injunction.
On Simchat Torah, the verse, Torah tsiva lanu Moshe (Moses commanded us the Torah, an inheritance for the community of Jacob), is read from the last portion in the Torah, Zot HaBracha. Traditionally, this is the first line of Torah a father must teach his young son when he begins to speak. The Talmud Sukkah says that he should also teach him the first verse of Shema Yisrael. The latter is the classic affirmation of Jewish faith, Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One! And yet, the Talmud mentions Torah tsiva lanu first. Why? Because even the most fervent faith will eventually wither without a strong foundation of Torah.
So life after the holidays there certainly is—a life of Torah and mitzvot. If we have that, a healthy, vibrant synagogue life will also surely follow.
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