Shmini Atzeret and Simkhat Torah
Oct. 4th, 2007 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillA thing before I get into the long Jewish rant of being Jewish.
So, apparently it's not a bad period, as I discovered when I slept another four hours after having slept thirteen hours last night, then woke up and had to go throw up. I'm sick. I'm sure the cramps are period-cramps, but they're being made worse by the fact that I have a stomach bug. At least it's not the dry-throat-and-stuffed-nose kind. I'm hoping it's more of a 24 to 48 hour kind, which can be alleviated by copious amounts of honey tea and pink-abysmal.
So. Today was Shmini Atzeret, which I am impressed if you can pronounce. It means something like "gathering of the eighth day." I Ancient Israel, Sukkot was only a seven-day-long holiday, and Shmini Atzeret was entirely separate. In modern times and places that aren't Jerusalem, Shmini Atzeret overlaps with the last day of Sukkot.
What you do on Shmini Atzeret is go to Shul for an extra long service, called "Geshem." Remember when I explained about praying for dew as opposed to rain? Well, "Geshem" (Geh-shehm) is the other way around, when we start praying for the winter rain so the crops will grow. And yes, the word geshem does mean rain. That's basically the point of Shmini Atzeret: switch over from summer dew prayers to winter rain prayers.
Then, when the next day starts at sunset, Simkhat Torah (Seem-khaht Torah) begins. Simkhat Torah is that time of year when, if you have been reading your regularly scheduled portion every week, you run out of Torah to read and have to start again at the beginning. To accomplish this, we have a wonderful service consisting mostly of running seven laps around the Shul while carrying Torahs, chanting, and dancing. Yes, all at the same time. Everyone in the Shul above the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah is supposed to carry at least one Torah for one lap, or Hakafa. In cities like Chicago, you actual dancing in the actual street, and the celebrant carry the Torahs from one Shul to another and count each Shul they visit as a Hakafa. The morning after, someone gets a headache trying to figure out whose Torahs ended up where . . .
But anyway. Hakafot (plural of Hakafa). Then we do another wonderful Jewish Tradition, which involves rounding up all the persons younger than the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah. This takes some time, as the ones who are old enough to remember this tend to do so willingly but the younger ones get restless quickly. Then you unwind the Torah.
Let's back up. The Torah is a book, but not a book with actual pages. Instead, it's written on sixty-four pieces of cowhide, each of which comes from a different cow because the rules for what part of the cow you can use for a Torah are very strict and pretty much limit it to one per cow. You can use the rest of the cowhide for other things, though, so it's not wasted. Anyway. Large pieces of vellum parchment, sewn together in such a way that you end up with a very long sheet. Each end is then attached to a wooden roller, and thus you end up with the classic Torah scroll. Rewinding a Torah from end to beginning is then a simple matter of turning your wooden rollers in opposite direction, so the parchment ends up on the opposite roller that is started on, much like a cassette tape. This is how six out of seven Torah are rewound at the end of the year.
The seventh on is used in this ceremony. All the children are corralled into a lump, an the adults stand in a largeish circle around them. Then you unwind a Torah, starting at the end (because that is where you are at this time of year) and moving to the front. The adults hold the Torah . . . so you and up with kinds in the middle, surrounded by adults holding the unwound Torah. The guy with one wooden roller ends up standing next to the guy with the other wooden roller. In this way, the kids are literally surrounded by Torah as well as metaphorically. A blessing is said. Then you rewind, in the same direction, on the other roller, so you end up with the scroll rolled on the opposite roller as it was and at the beginning instead of at the end.
Once this has occurred, each child is given a piece of candy. This is how you can get fifty children between the ages of one month and thirteen years to sit still for the time needed to do this. They are also each given a balloon, about half of which end up on the ceiling before the night is out.
Then you have your Torah service. Torah is read in portions called "Parsha" (par-shah) or "Parshot" (par-shote) (the pural). Each Parsha is divided into seven "Aliya" (all-ee-ah) or "Aliot" (All-ee-ote) (the plural). The way aliot are given out is slightly odd, but the basic way it works is that there's a person who says the blessings for reading the Torah and there's a person who actually reads the Torah, and these don't have to be the same person. The person who says the blessings is the one who has the aliya, whether or not s/he is reading the Torah. On a normal weekday service only three aliyot are read, while on Saturdays all seven are said. On Simchat Torah, we do a double parsha; that is, we read one whole parsha and then another whole parsha.
The parshot that are read are, in order, the very last parsha of Deuteronomy, followed by the very first parsha of Genesis. There is normally a slight pause between aliyot, when blessings are said and the reader, if there's more than one, moves so the next reader can read, but it's not very long. The gap between these two parshot it supposed to be even shorter, to the point that the last word, "Israel" and the first word, "Bereshit" are said in the same breath. This has to do with the fact that lamedh (lam-ed), the letter which makes the l sound, and bet, which makes the b sound, also spell out the word "lev" or heart. As in you are supposed to keep the Torah in your heart always. Torah reading then continues as normal through the end of the first portion, and the service is concluded in the normal way.
Tomorrow, during services, when you are reading the first parsha of Genesis again, (and again, and again) the balloons come floating down from the ceiling. The Simkhat Torah day service is unique in that everyone is supposed to have an aliya . . . which means the readers get to read it over and over and over until everyone has said the blessings for the reading of the Torah.
The parsha I read for my Bat Mitzvah was, in fact, the first parsha of Genesis, which means that I am going to be stuck doing this duty on Simkhat Torah day for the rest of forever. Joy.
It is interesting to note that, while the word "parsha" is often translated as chapter, they have nothing to do with the book, chapter, verse imposed by Christian theology. There is a similar system in Hebrew, but it goes book, parsha, verse, and verses are measured by how far in the parsha they occur. It generally matches until about twenty verses into any given book, after which the Hebrew system keeps counting and the Christian system starts a new chapter. The Christian system actually makes more sense storywise, because the chapters break at logical places in the text. Parshot break wherever was necessary to get fifty-four parshot in a year, regardless of what's happening in the text. (Fifty-four due to the fact that there can be between fifty-one and fifty-four weeks in a Jewish year. If there aren't all fifty-four, we do three double parshot in the year to make up for it.)
That's your foray into Judaism for the night, although I don't expect that many of you read it all. Oh well.
Thankfully, the holiday season is over, and the next one is Khannukah in December. I'll tell you about the revolt then.
And I have the etrog. A curious fact about etrog is that instead of rotting, they dessicate, and turn into hard rocklike brown thingies, which still smell nice years later. Thus, the tradition of using etrog in sock drawers: they don't rot and continue to give off loverly scent forever, so you put them somewhere they will go to use. Although my uncle once grew an etrog tree from the seeds of his etrog . . .
So, apparently it's not a bad period, as I discovered when I slept another four hours after having slept thirteen hours last night, then woke up and had to go throw up. I'm sick. I'm sure the cramps are period-cramps, but they're being made worse by the fact that I have a stomach bug. At least it's not the dry-throat-and-stuffed-nose kind. I'm hoping it's more of a 24 to 48 hour kind, which can be alleviated by copious amounts of honey tea and pink-abysmal.
So. Today was Shmini Atzeret, which I am impressed if you can pronounce. It means something like "gathering of the eighth day." I Ancient Israel, Sukkot was only a seven-day-long holiday, and Shmini Atzeret was entirely separate. In modern times and places that aren't Jerusalem, Shmini Atzeret overlaps with the last day of Sukkot.
What you do on Shmini Atzeret is go to Shul for an extra long service, called "Geshem." Remember when I explained about praying for dew as opposed to rain? Well, "Geshem" (Geh-shehm) is the other way around, when we start praying for the winter rain so the crops will grow. And yes, the word geshem does mean rain. That's basically the point of Shmini Atzeret: switch over from summer dew prayers to winter rain prayers.
Then, when the next day starts at sunset, Simkhat Torah (Seem-khaht Torah) begins. Simkhat Torah is that time of year when, if you have been reading your regularly scheduled portion every week, you run out of Torah to read and have to start again at the beginning. To accomplish this, we have a wonderful service consisting mostly of running seven laps around the Shul while carrying Torahs, chanting, and dancing. Yes, all at the same time. Everyone in the Shul above the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah is supposed to carry at least one Torah for one lap, or Hakafa. In cities like Chicago, you actual dancing in the actual street, and the celebrant carry the Torahs from one Shul to another and count each Shul they visit as a Hakafa. The morning after, someone gets a headache trying to figure out whose Torahs ended up where . . .
But anyway. Hakafot (plural of Hakafa). Then we do another wonderful Jewish Tradition, which involves rounding up all the persons younger than the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah. This takes some time, as the ones who are old enough to remember this tend to do so willingly but the younger ones get restless quickly. Then you unwind the Torah.
Let's back up. The Torah is a book, but not a book with actual pages. Instead, it's written on sixty-four pieces of cowhide, each of which comes from a different cow because the rules for what part of the cow you can use for a Torah are very strict and pretty much limit it to one per cow. You can use the rest of the cowhide for other things, though, so it's not wasted. Anyway. Large pieces of vellum parchment, sewn together in such a way that you end up with a very long sheet. Each end is then attached to a wooden roller, and thus you end up with the classic Torah scroll. Rewinding a Torah from end to beginning is then a simple matter of turning your wooden rollers in opposite direction, so the parchment ends up on the opposite roller that is started on, much like a cassette tape. This is how six out of seven Torah are rewound at the end of the year.
The seventh on is used in this ceremony. All the children are corralled into a lump, an the adults stand in a largeish circle around them. Then you unwind a Torah, starting at the end (because that is where you are at this time of year) and moving to the front. The adults hold the Torah . . . so you and up with kinds in the middle, surrounded by adults holding the unwound Torah. The guy with one wooden roller ends up standing next to the guy with the other wooden roller. In this way, the kids are literally surrounded by Torah as well as metaphorically. A blessing is said. Then you rewind, in the same direction, on the other roller, so you end up with the scroll rolled on the opposite roller as it was and at the beginning instead of at the end.
Once this has occurred, each child is given a piece of candy. This is how you can get fifty children between the ages of one month and thirteen years to sit still for the time needed to do this. They are also each given a balloon, about half of which end up on the ceiling before the night is out.
Then you have your Torah service. Torah is read in portions called "Parsha" (par-shah) or "Parshot" (par-shote) (the pural). Each Parsha is divided into seven "Aliya" (all-ee-ah) or "Aliot" (All-ee-ote) (the plural). The way aliot are given out is slightly odd, but the basic way it works is that there's a person who says the blessings for reading the Torah and there's a person who actually reads the Torah, and these don't have to be the same person. The person who says the blessings is the one who has the aliya, whether or not s/he is reading the Torah. On a normal weekday service only three aliyot are read, while on Saturdays all seven are said. On Simchat Torah, we do a double parsha; that is, we read one whole parsha and then another whole parsha.
The parshot that are read are, in order, the very last parsha of Deuteronomy, followed by the very first parsha of Genesis. There is normally a slight pause between aliyot, when blessings are said and the reader, if there's more than one, moves so the next reader can read, but it's not very long. The gap between these two parshot it supposed to be even shorter, to the point that the last word, "Israel" and the first word, "Bereshit" are said in the same breath. This has to do with the fact that lamedh (lam-ed), the letter which makes the l sound, and bet, which makes the b sound, also spell out the word "lev" or heart. As in you are supposed to keep the Torah in your heart always. Torah reading then continues as normal through the end of the first portion, and the service is concluded in the normal way.
Tomorrow, during services, when you are reading the first parsha of Genesis again, (and again, and again) the balloons come floating down from the ceiling. The Simkhat Torah day service is unique in that everyone is supposed to have an aliya . . . which means the readers get to read it over and over and over until everyone has said the blessings for the reading of the Torah.
The parsha I read for my Bat Mitzvah was, in fact, the first parsha of Genesis, which means that I am going to be stuck doing this duty on Simkhat Torah day for the rest of forever. Joy.
It is interesting to note that, while the word "parsha" is often translated as chapter, they have nothing to do with the book, chapter, verse imposed by Christian theology. There is a similar system in Hebrew, but it goes book, parsha, verse, and verses are measured by how far in the parsha they occur. It generally matches until about twenty verses into any given book, after which the Hebrew system keeps counting and the Christian system starts a new chapter. The Christian system actually makes more sense storywise, because the chapters break at logical places in the text. Parshot break wherever was necessary to get fifty-four parshot in a year, regardless of what's happening in the text. (Fifty-four due to the fact that there can be between fifty-one and fifty-four weeks in a Jewish year. If there aren't all fifty-four, we do three double parshot in the year to make up for it.)
That's your foray into Judaism for the night, although I don't expect that many of you read it all. Oh well.
Thankfully, the holiday season is over, and the next one is Khannukah in December. I'll tell you about the revolt then.
And I have the etrog. A curious fact about etrog is that instead of rotting, they dessicate, and turn into hard rocklike brown thingies, which still smell nice years later. Thus, the tradition of using etrog in sock drawers: they don't rot and continue to give off loverly scent forever, so you put them somewhere they will go to use. Although my uncle once grew an etrog tree from the seeds of his etrog . . .
