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Simchat Torah October 2, 2026
Dear Friends, Reviewing years of Simchat Torah experiences, my mind drifts to another spiritual practice, that of the Whirling Dervish, a Sufi tradition. The dervish spins and spins, with one hand reaching toward heaven and the other toward earth. From the outside, it can look dizzying. But the purpose of the spinning is not to get somewhere. It is to find a center. On Simchat Torah, we do something that feels a little like this. We take the Torah scroll and dance with it. We carry it, sing with it, and move around it. And then, at the very end of the Torah, we begin to roll. We watch as the scroll turns and turns. The final words of Deuteronomy disappear from view. We roll past Moses, through the stories of our ancestors, all the way back to the very beginning. And then we read: בראשית, “In the beginning.” The Torah keeps turning. But we are not the same people who began reading it a year ago. The Torah hasn't changed. We have. So when we return to the beginning, we bring the whole year with us: what we have learned, what we have experienced, what has changed us. Perhaps that is one of the great gifts of Jewish time. We don't always move forward in a straight line. Sometimes we return to the beginning so that we can encounter it again with new eyes. Like the whirling dervish, we keep moving while remaining connected to a center. We finish the Torah. We turn it. And we begin again. Not because we haven't gone anywhere, but because we have. Join us on Sunday as we dance with the sifrei Torah and whirl in our own way, celebrating the end, the beginning, and everything we carry with us in between. Shabbat Shalom and chag sameach,
Rabbi Dahlia Bernstein
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