From Holiday to Isru Chag and Back to the Beginning

There's an old saying that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. Judaism proves the saying wrong. We know that the year needs to alternate between winter and summer, and that there are times when we need dew and times when we need rain. Hence, our practice of praying for rain on Shemini Atzeret and for dew on Pesach.

How, one might ask, does praying for dew or rain constitute doing something about the weather? Our method is not that of the rainmaker in some cultures, who uses the

Does praying for dew or rain constitute doing something about the weather?

principles of imitative magic: "If they wish to make rain," J. G. Frazer says in The Golden Bough, "they simulate it by sprinkling water, or mimicking clouds; if their object is to stop rain and cause drought, they avoid water and resort to warmth and fire for the sake of drying up the too abundant moisture."

What we do is to see God as the source of all blessing and to tell Him of our yearning for the blessing of the right weather at the right time. But, it might be said, how can Jews in the southern hemisphere pray for rain on Shemini Atzeret, which is the beginning of their summer?

In Australia, this argument was actually taken seriously at one stage and the prayers were reversed, with the prayer for rain being said on Pesach and the prayer for dew on Shemini Atzeret "on account of the difference in the seasons between the hemispheres." In recent decades, the universal practice has been restored.

Rabbi S. M. Lehrman wrote (Jewish Chronicle, 14 October 1960), "The very act of praying for rain for the land of Israel, by worshipers who lived in countries that had more than their share of this precious commodity, linked the scattered fragments of the House of Israel into one corporate people."

Hence, when it rains in Israel, there is joy in Australia; when the water in the Kinneret is low, there is concern in Canada and Colombia. For this reason, Yehudah HaLevi's words are still true: "My heart is in the east, and I am in the west."

Why the name Simchat Torah? Developing an idea from the Sefer HaManhig of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Yar'chi (13th century), one might say that Rosh HaShanah helps us to make peace with God, Yom Kippur with our own soul, Sukkot with our home, Shemini Atzeret with nature and Simchat Torah with the Torah.

Each occasion is a simchah. The one that concludes the series equips us to know how to maintain each of the treaties. When we study the Torah and live by its precepts, we remain on good terms with God, keep our soul in good shape, have a firm basis of family and community, have good relations with nature, and cherish the Torah that gives our life meaning.

Historically, the simchah part of the name probably comes from the ancient Sukkot traditions, especially Simchat Beit HaSho'evah, "The Festivity of the Water-Drawing," of ancient times (Mishnah, Sukkah 5:1).

As our ancestors encircled the altar on Sukkot, so do we encircle the bimah carrying the Torah scrolls. We rejoice in and with them, happy that we have concluded the yearly readings and can at once re-commence the cycle. It is thus Simchat Torah, our rejoicing over the Torah - or possibly, it is the Torah's rejoicing over the Jewish people, who

Possibly, it is the Torah's rejoicing over the Jewish people.

remain faithful to their tradition despite every temptation to weaken in and even, God forbid, abandon it.

If we compare a festival to a mountain, it has an ascent to the peak, a peak, and a descent. The ascent is the lead-up, when we already feel the air of what awaits us. The peak is the Yom Tov itself. The descent is the days following the festival, when we still feel the festival mood, especially on Isru Chag, the day immediately after the Yom Tov.

The name Isru Chag is from Psalms 118:27, part of Hallel, which reads, "Is'ru chag ba'avotim ad kar'not hamizbe'ach" - "Bind the festive offering with cords to the altar." Others translate the verse, "Order the festival procession with boughs, up to the horns of the altar." Tradition gave the Hebrew words the figurative meaning, "Bind (hold on to) the festival," so that the festive atmosphere lingers. In the Jerusalem Talmud, the day after a Yom Tov is b'reh d'mo'eda - "the son of the festival," which conveys the same idea.

There is a link with Shavuot, which is, in Israel, a one-day festival. In Temple times, certain offerings were brought on the following day, which gave it a festive character. In addition, on other festivals, the meat of the offerings could still be eaten on the next day, adding a special flavour to the descent from the peak.

No important occasion should be allowed to be quickly forgotten. It should brighten and influence the days ahead. The same with a person who was important in one's life. Even after they are gone, their example and influence should linger.

Bereshit commences with God creating an ordered universe in place of the tohu vavohu, the "chaos and void." The American Jewish version renders the Hebrew, "unformed and void." Other translations include "an unformed waste."

With its doubled ohu, tohu vavohu is a play on words. The vav ("and") does not separate the words, but makes them into a hendiadys, one unit. Another example is Genesis 1:14, "signs and seasons", which indicates "set times"; the device is also found in Genesis 3:16, "your pain and travail"; i.e. "your childbirth pain." English has its own hendiadys; e.g., "well and good", "good and ready."

In human terms, a good marriage is not merely two people, a husband and wife, but basar echad, "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). Yiddish has a good phrase for father and mother, de Tattemamme - "the daddy-mummy." The best relationships have a unity of emotion, thought and being.

It is a truly majestic beginning to history: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) "Created" is bara. 52 times this verb, in all its various grammatical forms, occurs in the Hebrew Bible. Every time, it refers to an act of creation by God.

In Biblical thinking, human beings design things, build them, make them, but they do not "create" them. Not that this is the way we speak these days. We constantly refer to human creativity. Disraeli said, "Man is made to create, from the poet to the potter."

There is a type of creativity with which God has endowed man.

Centuries earlier, Moses Ibn Ezra said, "The poet and the artist create by nature, not because of what they acquired by learning."

Does this mean that, like the builders of the Tower of Babel, man has stormed the heavens and seized the Divine prerogative of creating? It might appear so, but it is not true. There is a type of creativity with which God has endowed man, but there is a difference. Only God creates without preexistent raw material (though a strand of Greek thought posited the eternal existence of matter). Man's creation is not yesh me'ayin, something out of nothing, but yesh miyesh, something out of something. The something is the cultural inheritance of the generations. You could not think a new thought, develop a new technique, or discover a new cure, if not for what others did before you, going right back to God Himself, who gave Man the world and told Man, "Till it!"

This is why it is amusing and rather arrogant to hear a person claim, "Until I came on the scene no one knew anything!" It never hurts to have a little humility and recognition of what others have done.