Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: What is the origin of Simchat Torah? When was it introduced as an observance -- would like as detailed a response as possible. Thank you. Marcia
		A: The holidays Sinchat Torah and Shemini Atzeret are the source of much confusion. Here's how the whole thing works and where it came from. In the Torah, we are told to observe the holiday of Sukkot for seven days. The first of these days is a "yom tov," a day on which we are not supposed to work, but only to celebrate. The eighth day was a "finishing day," an "atseret" in Hebrew. It, too, was a yom tov. That day came to be known as the "eighth day for finishing," in Hebrew, "Shemini Khag Ha'atseret," or just "Shemini Atseret." Shemini Atseret originally had no distinctive tradition that distinguished it from any yom tov. It was just the day you came inside from your sukkah, and had one last day of complete joy at the end of Sukkot and at the end of the whole autumnal holiday season. Now we need to talk about the moon. The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar in which the months start at the new moon. In ancient times, the exact date of the beginning of each month was determined that month by the Jewish court in Jerusalem, based upon the testimony of witnesses who said they saw the moon in its newness. Then, they would send a signal from Jerusalem to the whole Jewish world that announced the day of the new moon. Now if you lived in the diaspora, this wasn't a very dependable system; you could pretty much tell by looking that the new moon was on one of two days, but knowing the exact date required that you get the message from Jerusalem, and the message system was far from foolproof. So let's say you have a holiday like Shemini Atseret that falls on the 22nd day of the month of Tishrei. If you know that the first day of Tishrei was one of two possible days, but you're not sure which, then the 22nd of Tishrei could also be one of two days. So the custom arose outside the land of Israel that every yom tov was celebrated for two days -- the two days on which it might fall, given the imperfect knowledge of the date as declared by the court in Jerusalem. The upshot of that lunar (lunatic?) digression is that in the diaspora, it came to be the custom to celebrate seven days of sukkot, with the first two being yom tov, and then two days of Shemini Atseret (so that if you count the two holidays together, the "eighth day for finishing" became the 'eighth and ninth day for finishing.') (We're almost there; I promise.) Simchat Torah originated as a way of celebrating the second day of Shemini Atseret. In Babylonia, where the Talmud was written, the Jews had the custom of reading the whole Torah through over the course of one year. Already in Talmudic times, (the traditional date of the compilation of the Talmud is 499 C.E., although some scholars would put it one- or two- hundred years later), it was the custom to finish the annual reading of the Torah on the second day of Shemini Atseret. (There is some indication that there was an earlier or parallel custom of completing it the afternoon of Yom Kippur.) But it doesn't appear to have been the custom to also start the next annual cycle of Torah-reading on the same day. At some point, that custom arose, although there were arguments within the rabbinic Jewish leadership of the ninth and tenth centuries about the propriety of following the end of the Torah with its beginning on the second day of Shemini Atseret. Up to this point, we have no record of a special name for the day; It was just called "the second day of Atseret." The first mention of the name Simchat Torah (which means "the celebration of Torah") is in about the year 1000. Fairly soon after this, it became well accepted in the diaspora communities that followed the leadership of the Babylonian rabbis, that the second day of Shemini Atseret was a day of celebrating the Torah -- of Simchat Torah -- on which the annual cycle of Torah reading was both ended and begun, and on which special prayers, dancing, etc. took place. Now what about the land of Israel? Originally, the custom in the land of Israel was to read the Torah through in approximately three years, and we don't know if or when there was a particular day that the cycle finished or began every third year. Eventually, (by the 13th or 14th century) however, the Babylonian custom of an annual Torah-reading cycle became universal, including in the land of Israel. At that point, the practice of Simchat Torah was irresistible. It's both symbolically lovely, attesting to the everlastingness of Torah study, and fun. But remember that in the land of Israel, there's only one day of Shemini Atseret. So that in Israel, Simchat Torah is the celebrated as the one and only day of Shemini Atseret. In the modern period, the Reform and Reconstructionist movements have said that there is no longer any reason to have the second day of any yom tov in the diaspora, since there has been an accurate astronomical calendar for centuries that lets everyone know exactly when the official new moon is, without any message from Jerusalem. Given that, one logical approach to a liberal Shemini Atseret/Simchat Torah is to do what they do in Israel: Have one day of Shemini Atseret, which is also Simchat Torah. This is what many Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues do. However, there's one kink in that practice. And that is that, in the wake of the trauma of the Crusades and the Black plague, the European Jewish communities expanded the recitation of "Yizkor" memorial prayers from once-a-year on Yom Kippur to four times a year, including Shemini Atseret (along with Passover and Shavuot). So the Yizkor service gives the morning of Shemini Atseret a somewhat somber tone, which some congregations feel cannot coexist with the jubilance and even hilarity of Simchat Torah. Congregations who feel that way do one of two things. They might celebrate the closing and beginning of the Torah cycle (Simchat Torah) on the evening, but not the morning, of Shemini Atseret. Alternatively, they extend the one day Shemini Atseret into its second evening, when they celebrate Simchat Torah and close the holiday there, without going on to the following morning. And that should keep all you Reform and Reconstructionist ritual committees scratching your heads until next Shemini Atseret/Simchat Torah. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz
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