Simchat Torah Celebration

Yesterday afternoon and evening, all of JQuest met for an hour of class, and then we all went up to the Social Hall to have a pizza dinner followed by a community celebration of this final holiday of the month of Tishrei.

During our classtime together, I read "A Torah is Written," to the class, which describes in great detail how a trained "sofer" (scribe) prepares the materials used for copying a "sefer Torah" (Torah scroll) - the parchment, ink and quill - and shares all the laws a sofer must follow to produce a "kosher" sefer Torah for a community. I wanted my students to be aware of the skill and time and patience it takes a sofer to copy a sefer Torah, so that they could truly appreciate our Isaiah Torah scrolls during the Simchat Torah celebration.

Once we joined everyone upstairs in the Social Hall, we found tables laden with wonderful things to eat for our dinner, brought by JQuest families

Every table set up in the Social Hall had two boxes of hot pizza waiting to be gobbled up

The tables filled up very quickly - and there were a lot of tables! Fortunately, there were more tables set up outside where families could dine 'al fresco'

Once dinner was over, it was time to move to the Sanctuary to joyously celebrate our having completed reading all five books of the Torah, and to symbolically begin reading them again.

But before we began unrolling the Torah scrolls, all the JQuest kindergarten students and other new students to JQuest were asked to come to the bima and help lead us all in chanting the "Sh'ma" prayer.

Then Rabbis Shanks, LaVine and Miller and Cantor Korn pronounced the priestly blessing in Hebrew and English over the children as they stood under a "chupah" (canopy) created by a tallit (prayer shawl) held over them.

Finally, it was time to unroll the Torah scrolls:

Rabbi Shanks pointed out the special place in the Book of Exodus (the second book of the Torah) where the pattern of the words on the parchment is designed to reflect the description the words share of the crossing of the Israelites on dry land between the walls formed by the waters of the Reed Sea as they parted:

I managed to snap photos of two of our Edot students as all this was going on -

Callen (with his brother) and...

...Zach (with some friends).

Once the Torahs were rolled back up and "dressed" again, they were taken to the Oneg Room where we continued our Simchat Torah celebration by dancing -

First the Hora (with the Torah)!:

and finally, led by our DJs Dennon and Doyle, in other forms of joyous dance!

CHAG SIMCHAT TORAH SAMEACH!