The Torah consists of the first 5 books of the Bible. It is the central text of Judaism, the element that allowed a disparate, scattered group of Jews to hang together as a people, the "people of the book." As such, it gets its own holiday.
On this day, the assembled community, which is already gathered at the Sukkah to party down, carries the Torah around the sanctuary, singing and dancing, and, in some synagogues, like my own, unrolls the entire amazing scroll to see it in its entirety.
The Torah is not a "book" of the kind we are used to. It remains in its ancient form as a scroll on parchment, written by hand with a turkey feather and vegetable ink, an ancient technology and a ritual in itself. It is garbed in works of art, hand embroidered covers with such designs as pomegranites, entwined leaves, and other images of fecundity from the natural world, and resides in a carved cabinet called an ark, reminiscent of Noah's life-raft for every living creature in the primordial flood. This is no coincidence, since the Torah has been Judaism's life raft in the various catastrophes it has experienced and seems to attract as no other people before.
On this particular evening, I served as a chuppah bearer for part of the time and also held up my tiny portion of the scroll, as children and their parents danced in the middle. A chuppah is something like a canopy over a 4 poster bed. I held one of the posts, covering the two Torahs and their bearers. When I held the Torah, along with maybe 70 0ther adults, it was over my head because the guy standing next to me was very tall. I couldn't really see the entire thing unless I stood on my toes and peered over the top, which I did several times.
People took pictures of everything and everyone. If I can get one of me holding the chuppah maybe, or holding up the Torah, I'll post it.
2 comments:
The celebration of the text as sacred record is wonderful, so wonderful. I love the image of you on your tiptoes!
I felt like a young child, lost in a sea of legs.
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