Simchat Torah: Grasping the divine strands of joy

Hevel hevelim. Utter futility, says Koheleth. Utter futility. All is futile. 

During Sukkot, we live with the barest of roofs over our heads. We seek out a sense of vulnerability to counter our complacency – the sense that the work of our hands alone can save us – a reminder we surely do not need this year. It is with this intentional vulnerability that we read Koheleth (the Book of Ecclesiastes) a whole treatise on the futility of human life: All is vanity, mere vapor, a nonexistence-existence. 

But there’s a challenge inherent in the juxtaposition of the meaninglessness Koheleth refers to and the vulnerability of Sukkot. For, if all is futile, if our existence doesn’t matter to begin with, if there is no joy, meaning, or purpose, then we have nothing to lose and our vulnerability doesn’t matter.

The writer’s lament that all is hevel – emptiness – is correct. That is, in response to the question he poses: “What real value is there for a man in all the gains he makes beneath the sun?” If we ask only about the value of humanity, of a human being, “beneath the sun,” in a world apart from God, then we are led, inevitably, to the response that all is futility. 

I think a better Jewish question is not about the value of life “beneath the sun” alone, but what the value of our humanity is in our relationship with the Holy Blessed One. 

The value of humanity in a relationship with God

In Psalm 121, we read, “I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where will my help come from? God is our protective shade, the stability of our steps. God faithfully watches over us, day and night, coming and going.” Rabbi Lisa Goldstein asks what this help is in times of immense distress. Might we feel a betrayal of that promised protection?

She teaches that these words remind God to be our help – not describing a permanent reality. Right now, God needs us to strengthen God in this way. God is in a dynamic relationship with us, one that shrinks and grows. We have an obligation to bring out God’s help.

IN BERESHIT Rabbah 44:12, Abraham essentially calls God out, claiming that He lied. Astrologers told him that he would never have offspring. The rabbis write, based on Genesis 15:5: “And God took him outside.” God took Abraham above the vault of the firmament and said, “Look at the heavens before you. It is only important to look from above to below. Everyone who is placed below the stars is afraid of them, but you who are placed beyond them, hold your head high (literally, ‘you trample over them’).” We cannot view the world from a limited human perspective but must imbue, as much as possible, God’s expanse.

We search, through Jewish tradition – together as a holy nation and a kingdom of priests – for our unending fullness. Here, we will find strands of divine connection all around us. 

Rabbi Oded Mazor of Kehilat Kol Haneshama, where my family and I belong, lifted our eyes to these threads when we could barely see them throughout this dreadful year. Some threads had become so pale as to melt into the darkness, but with his words and spirit, he helped us to discern their faintest flicker, to connect ourselves to these strands between heaven and earth. “From the narrow place, I called to God, and God answered from the expanse.”

We need these strands to be free of futility; to join our worlds below and above the firmament; to imbue life with holiness: meaning, and purpose. I do not know what holiness is, but I have a strong sense of what it is not: Holiness is the opposite of futility, the opposite of waste. And these strands – messy mixes of mitzvot, traditions, metaphors, stories, and values – that connect us with the Holy Blessed One, are the electricity that powers holiness.

The Hebrew word for electricity, hashmal, comes from Ezekiel 1:4: “I looked, and lo, a stormy wind came sweeping out of the North – a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance; and in the center of it, in the center of the fire, a gleam as of hashmal.” The meaning of it is, like God, a mystery. But it is understood as “a brilliant amalgam of gold and silver” – something that is by definition “in combination.” 

It is only the combination, the mutuality of our people and God, that meaning exists. The rabbis teach, “God rules the world, but who rules over God? The righteous rule over God.” 

God is our creator, but we also influence God. I do not believe it is just the righteous who influence God. It is the righteous, and it is the evil. Through actions on Earth, by all humanity – Jews in our own way – we have the possibility to create a cosmic momentum of creation, revelation, and redemption. Or the opposite.

During the High Holy Days, we recite the 13 Attributes of God, in which God passes before Moses and proclaims: “The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations” (Exodus 34:6-7).

God names the Godself twice, both in the third person – Adonai! Adonai! I imagine this as God’s introduction to two ends of a divine spectrum, a range of divine inclinations. With urgency, God is pleading for our people’s partnership to strengthen the impulses of love and kindness over anger and retribution, to strengthen the attributes of kindness and mercy in God. In this hard world, God wants the people of Israel to strengthen those divine qualities over others. 

We are approaching Simchat Torah and an often challenging – but this year surreal – commandment to be joyful. It’s strained, if not seemingly impossible, to embody joy right now. The divine strands of joy around us are so dim as to be nearly invisible.

But they are there – impossibly, miraculously – in what may feel like futility. As we move our feet in movements of dance, the Torah in our arms, and shared with love and tenderness in the community, we just might bump into a strand of joy – and, in that connection, light it a bit brighter in our souls, in Kehilat Yisrael, and in the heavens. 

The writer –  a rabbi and the co-author of Jewish Family & Life and author of Casting Lots – is the founding director of Second Nurture: Every Child Deserves a Family and a Community, which partners with synagogues in the US to support local foster families. She lives in Israel with her husband and their five grown children.