The yearning behind the joy

Simchat Torah comes at the very end of the holiday season. For weeks, our lives have revolved around Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, family time, prayer and celebration. Then the holidays end, and we return to the rhythm of ordinary life.

That transition is part of the message of Simchat Torah.

This is the holiday that we celebrate with great joy, and we express that joy by dancing with our feet. There’s something very down-to-earth about that. We don’t need to understand every word of the Torah to celebrate. We simply take our feet and move.

Chassidic teaching sees a deeper meaning in this. The feet represent the most ordinary part of the body and Simchat Torah teaches us to bring the joy of Torah into the ordinary parts of our lives.

It is easy to feel inspired during the holidays. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur give us time away from ordinary routines, and Sukkot surrounds us with Jewish traditions. Simchat Torah gives us one last burst of celebration before we return to everyday life.

Then comes Monday morning. The challenge is to take something with us.

Simchat Torah also contains another feeling besides joy. There is a deep longing for closeness to G-d. At first, these feelings seem to pull in opposite directions. We are celebrating, yet we are also aware that the holidays are ending.

But the two feelings belong together. The more we appreciate what we experience during the holidays, the more we feel the absence of that experience afterward. That longing can push us to bring something from the holidays into the rest of the year.

The Torah readings on Simchat Torah make this point especially clearly. We finish the Torah with Moses blessing the Jewish people, and then we immediately begin Genesis. We move from the final words of the Torah to the creation of the physical world.

The first chapter of Genesis tells us, “Let there be light.” That’s our work after the holidays. We take the light we experienced in the synagogue and bring it into our homes and workplaces. We bring Jewish values into our conversations and into the way we treat other people.

The goal is to let the holiday change the way we live after it ends. That’s why Simchat Torah comes with both joy and longing. The joy gives us energy, while the longing reminds us what we want to bring into our everyday lives.

This idea has felt especially personal to me this year.

My grandmother, Rivka Chitrik, passed away during Sukkot at the age of 96. As I think about her life during these days, I’ve found myself considering what it means to bring Judaism into ordinary life.

My grandmother was one of the Rebbe’s first emissaries. In 1951, shortly after her marriage to my grandfather, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Chitrik, the Rebbe sent them to Brazil. They spent eight years in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, building Jewish schools and strengthening Jewish life.

They later settled back in Brooklyn, where my grandmother remained active in Jewish communal work. She was known for her kindness and hospitality. Her home was open to people from many different backgrounds.

She lived a deeply committed Jewish life without becoming distant from the people around her. She knew how to hold firmly to her own values and still make others feel welcome.

That’s the lesson I take from her life, and it connects with the message of Simchat Torah.

Judaism cannot remain limited to the most spiritual moments of the year. The real challenge comes afterward, in the ordinary moments, when the dancing ends, the Torah scrolls are put away and the sukkah comes down.

That’s when we return to our lives.

Simchat Torah teaches us to bring some of its joy with us. My grandmother showed me what that can look like.