TALK: On Living in a Circle (Simchat Torah)

(Originally delivered as a talk at Ohr HaTorah’s Women’s Simchat Torah reading, October, 2020 — during the height of the covid pandemic)

Moshe dies without achieving his final goal — bringing the people into the Promised Land.   From the start of the mission, God makes the land the destination point, telling Moshe that the goal is to take the people out of Egypt in order to bring them into the land of their ancestors.  Moshe never gets there.  The Torah ends and neither Moshe nor the people have gotten there.

This is important, this not getting there.   We live our lives in the shadow of a “there” that we reach for and plan for — that we will arrive at tomorrow and tomorrow, when we finally get “there.”   But this “there” is something of a moving target; once we achieve one goal, another appears.   God says to Moshe about the land — I have shown it to you with your eyes but shamah lo ta’avor, “there you will not cross” (Deut. 34:4).   You won’t get “there.”    “There” is a place that maybe we never do reach.  

But all is not lost.  Moshe doesn’t get “there” but we learn something else about him at his death.   We are told that he is an eved Hashem, “a servant of God” and that God communicated with him panim el panim, “face to face.”   Moshe was a person who lived in relationship with God, an intimate constant relationship of service.    In the end what matters is not whether he arrived at the destination point, but that he lived a life of daily divine service and connection.  

The difference between these two ways of being is like the difference between a line and a circle.   A line has a beginning and an end, a destination point.  A circle just keeps going round and round, no beginning, no end, no goal other than to be.    A circle is all about relationship; if we all stand in a circle, we are facing each other — panim el panim — and we can see everyone.  In a line, though, we have our backs towards each other, all lined up to march forward to achieve something.  Linear time moves forward; there is past. present and future, an endpoint.   But circular time stands still, living eternally in the present, in a present that — precisely because of its presence — taps into a time that is beyond this world.    Moshe didn’t reach the endpoint of a line; he spent his life in the circle of relationship to the One beyond time. 

This is a circle holiday, Simchat Torah.  We dance in circles around the Torah.  And when we read from the end of the Torah, we don’t stop there, but begin again from Breishit, as if erasing the destination point, and turning the whole Torah itself into a circle, end and beginning flowing naturally into each other in a continuous cycle.  

We need both circular and linear thinking, of course.  We have to be able to both move forward and stand still.  The ideal is probably some kind of spiral that includes both motions.   But for this holiday, it feels like the emphasis is the circle; it also feels like this emphasis is what most of us need hearing. 

Let us pause to feel the full strength of the circle — its wholeness, its presence, its sense of nothing to do, nowhere to go, its inclusiveness, its clarity about the centrality of relationship over accomplishment.   The circle does not get anywhere, but it does serve one clear function; it puts people into relationship with each other.  

There is a famous rabbinic tradition about the purpose of Shmini Atzeret.   Really, what is this holiday?  We’ve been through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; and then seven days of Sukkot.   Seven days complete a holiday. What is this eighth day tacked on for?  According to tradition, what God is saying on this eighth day is:  kashah alay predatkhem.   Your leaving is hard for Me. This last holiday is here just because God wants some more time with us.  It serves no purpose other than the relationship itself, just to be together.   We have thrown away our lulavs and abandoned our sukkot and long since put away our shofars.   We have gotten rid of the props.  All that is left is us and God, sitting together in the quiet that follows big events, enjoying each other’s company.   We are not trying to get anywhere or accomplish anything; no special mitzvot; we are in the circle mentality; it is all about relationship and nothing else.   It is as if God, after all those special mitzvot, now turns to us and says — you know what, it’s you that really matters to me and nothing else.  Just you.  You don’t have to do anything to earn that mattering.  Just stand still and be with me in my circle of connection.

As the “eighth” day, Shmini Atzeret participates in the circle way of being in another way as well.  Our calendar marks linear time from day 1 to day 7.  There is no eighth day.   It is as if we have taken ourselves out of normal linear time into some other form of time, this circle time — a time of presence and eternity, outside of the concrete counting world.

It is easy to talk about this circle way of being, but it is very difficult to sustain it in our lives.  We are driven to do and achieve and set goals and these are all good and necessary activities.   The problem is that often getting “there” becomes an end in itself and we never do get there.  We get lost on our journey; instead of focusing on relationship — with the people around us and with God — we focus on accomplishment, as if what matters is the project we are involved in instead of the person right in front of us.  

And we are so busy preparing for tomorrow, it is often at the expense of tuning in to the now.  We give up a taste of eternity for a neverending run after a tomorrow that is always “there” and never here.  We miss out on the deepest moments of the present.  God’s last words to Moshe were shamah lo ta’avor.   There you will not cross.    On the surface God was telling Moshe that he would not be able to enter the land.    But maybe God was also saying something else — the “there” that you humans all seek — the one that is always just out of your grasp — you don’t need to get there.  You can let it go now.  You can just stay right here with Me and that is enough.   You are enough just as you are.   No need to run around building sukkot and buying lulavim anymore; just sit still and be with me. 

So today is a holiday of circles.  This year, there are no physical dancing circles for us to be part of, and yet, in a way I think maybe we can feel the power of the circle even more.  We have been forced to varying degrees to stop our relentless forward drive and, even if we are back on track now, that stopping has made many of us pause and rethink what matters to us.    Like Moshe, we have been physically restricted in our movement, told at times not to go there.   But by not going there, there has also been an opening of a space that is beyond geography and beyond time, a kind of circle space of no boundaries and eternity.  In that circle we can be connected with anyone and everyone.   People from across the globe can suddenly participate in our smachot.  Families can reunite.  Our invitation to the ushpizin this year to join our sukkah — in the absence of many other guests — felt different; guests from another time made sense in this new circle we live in, less tied to the physical constraints of geography and time.  

Let us feel the power of that new kind of circle right now.  Now is always the only time you can feel it.   So at this moment I want you to imagine that you are in a circle with every other woman here, all linking arms and standing together around our precious beyond this world Torah.   

We are going to expand our circle now.  This circle is also one of great inclusiveness.  Circles generally are — all facing each other; no person farther from the center than any other, no hierarchy, no one out of the loop.   The Torah ends with the words kol yisrael, all of Israel.  As we read the end of the Torah, we are building a circle that can hold us all.  

So feel the circle we have built with all the women right here.   And now feel it expand and grow..   Invite some others who are not here right now to join our circle, others in the community who normally come but could not make it this year, children and older adults who had to stay home, those in the community who have passed away recently or long ago, others in your own family from near and far, still alive or no longer with us, our people’s ancestors, Sarah and Rivka and Rachel and Leah, and their husbands, too, if you want, and any others who seem important to you from any other time and place.  The angels who are always around us, the malakhei hasharet — invite them in, too.  They strengthen the circle with their sense of constant presence. Invite in anyone else you can think of that embodies this sense of presence, that can link arms with us and help us hold it together.  Invite in, too, anyone who really needs this circle right now, anyone who is struggling or suffering, anyone who needs the circle’s strength.  Let them in; we need them, too.  Invite in, too, all parts of yourself — the parts of yourself that are strong and also the parts that are needy, so needy; invite them in to feel part of our circle of presence.   

So here we are, a big circle — a kehillat Yaakov.    Feel the power of connectedness; the power of simply being together, not going anywhere or doing anything.  We are here with each other, and we are here with our Torah and with the God whose Presence is running through us all.    Kudsha brikh hu ve orayta veyisrael Had hu.  God and the Torah and the people of Israel are all one entity.   One Presence, one circle. Feel the power of simply being present right at this moment to this sense of eternal connection.   There is no to-do list for tomorrow’s event.   Just each other right here at this moment.    Present and connected.

This is the work of the heart.   When we join the last letter of the Torah, a lamed, and the first letter of Breishit, a bet — when we turn the Torah into a circle — what we get is the word lev, heart.   When we create circles — places of relationship and timeless presence and wholeness — we are doing the work of the heart, we are continuing Moshe’s divine service.  We may never get “there” but that’s ok; we are already there; we are right here together.