If you finish a book and immediately start it again, it must be a good one!
At my synagogue, Temple Kol Ami in Scottsdale, we celebrated Simchat Torah—“Rejoicing in the Torah”—with singing, dancing, and a scroll that stretched around the room.
The little ones carried small cloth Torahs. Adults carefully held the unrolled Torah, which our synagogue had commissioned a scribe to write as part of a fundraiser.
One special part: young people who celebrated their Bar or Bat Mitzvah in the past year stood in front of their portions and chanted the passages they had learned for their own celebrations.
Then our Cantor chanted the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Genesis. We finished our annual Torah-reading cycle and immediately began again. Of course, we also had to carefully roll that whole scroll back to the beginning. A little more involved than turning a page!
As a Reform Jew, this is a glimpse of how we celebrate in my congregation. Other Jewish communities have their own customs.
For me, there’s something lovely about returning to our traditions each year. The readings come around again, but we bring another year of life to them—and perhaps notice something we hadn’t before.
Children, adults, singing, dancing, learning, and a few photos to share. This is our tradition, and I’m happy to give you a little peek.