Bookending the Torah

Although the actual parsha for this Shabbat is Parshat Berashit (Genesis), I wanted to write about Parshat V'zot HaBrachot (This is the blessing) in conjunction with Parshat Berashit. Mostly, this is because my congregation, here in Billings, MT, is doing things a little differently than the traditional service. We are doing Simchat Torah and Shabbat, all wrapped into one. They've found at least one way to get people there!

This parsha (V'zot HaBracha) gets the short end of the stick. It’s found at the very end of the Torah, so you would think it is the most read and discussed, that we get excited when it shows up around Simchat Torah. But in fact, this year, like many years (if not all years), we don’t read it except on Simchat Torah to bookend our  yearly Torah reading. It is read as the conclusion of the Torah, with the beginning of the Torah being Genesis, the beginning. Moses has lead us through the desert and guided us as a people for almost ¾ of the Jewish year (cycle). The least we can do is acknowledge that guidance, no?

Even stranger, is the fact that this parsha is lumped in with Genesis. Or maybe, that is its beauty. It isn’t read on its own, as its own Parshat HaShavuah, weekly Torah portion, because we shouldn’t see Moses’ death as the end. Rather, we should recognize that Moses was the leader who enabled us, as the Jewish people, to begin seeing ourselves as a people. We are indeed starting over after Moses’ death; we are heading into the promised land with a new leader, not our old, beloved one. We must learn to trust ourselves. We must begin to set our own path and believe in the rightness of that path. We must start at the beginning.

Therefore, it does actually seem fitting, to go from the end and immediately back to the beginning. That’s what happened to our people. That is what happens to us: we get to experience the whole Torah again, from a new perspective, a new age, or a slightly different angle. We are given the opportunity to re-immerse ourselves in the text and learn. We are given the chance to start a new with a clean slate. How will you begin again? How will you commit to learning and growing anew? How will you commit to allowing you perspective to be changed?

Time to begin

The past three weeks have been weeks of upheaval and unrest in my life. With Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and then Sukkot, there have been no new Torah portions read. Rather, we read the Parshiot associated with those particular days. In my own way, I have found meaning in each of these readings, and am incredibly grateful for this time to explore the text. Each reading has been beneficial.

Yet now, we are almost ready to begin again. We have looked inwards towards ourselves and found our own hearts, where we sit and how we wanted to come into the new year. And then we had Sukkot, זמן שמחתנו, the time of our happiness, the end of our harvest season. Wonderfully, that time is followed by Simchat Torah, when we celebrate the conclusion of reading the Torah and the beginning again. We are ready to begin again.

I, for one, am ready to begin again. I have done the personal reflection and have come to a place where I am at least okay with where I stand. The new year stands open and waiting. Time to take it by storm and explore what it has to offer. As the parsha says, בראשית ברא אלוהים, in the beginning, God created. God created many things, at the beginning. We've experienced the beginning of the year, the creation of new friendships and relationships. Now, I am ready to go out and explore, to find my Gan Eden, my garden of Eden and discover it.

This Simchat Torah, I look forward to doing just that. To taking a step back and seeing all the new things, the beginnings I've experienced. I look forward to exploring and discovering.