The Jewish people during the month of holidays are different from the people we know all year round. The synagogues, both permanent and makeshift, are filled to capacity during the High Holidays.
In the city squares, crowds dance with Torah scrolls during the second laps. The atmosphere is also more pleasant, conciliatory, and softer.
It's not easy to say goodbye to a month so rich in holidays and observances. It's hard to return to the gray, ordinary days of the week. It's even harder to leave the feeling of exaltation and unity that hovers in the air, and to think that we are expected to enter a routine saturated with tensions and struggles.
But in fact, the real mission begins now. The holiday season is nothing more than preparation and training for the real challenge - to bring faith and unity, joy and love of Torah into everyday life. The holiday is not the goal and objective, but rather the ordinary, gray weekdays.
Side of the road
During the past holidays, we have been equipped with an abundance of spiritual content and experiences, which we must now apply in our daily lives. Each holiday has given us a different kind of "gift," and now we have a backpack packed for the whole year.
From Rosh Hashanah, we accept the yoke of the kingdom of God. On this day, we all stood before God, blew the shofar, and crowned God anew as King over us. Accepting the yoke of the kingdom of heaven is fundamental to our daily lives, and it is expressed in the daily recitation of Shema Yisrael.
On Yom Kippur, we revealed the inner essence that lies within each of us. We discovered on this day that we are all warm Jews, full of faith and love for the Creator. We proved that our mistakes and sins do not express our inner truth. After Yom Kippur, we all feel that we are Jews, children of God.
There is someone to rely on.
The holiday of Sukkot gave us a profound look at the unity of the Jewish people. We understood that no Jew is more or less equal. We realized that without the willow, there is no use in the etrog, the lulav, and the myrtle. We all sat in one sukkah, which spread its wings over us, and we remembered the wings of the Divine Presence spread over the Jewish people and the hand of providence that leads it to its destination.
And finally comes Simchat Torah, where everyone dances with the Torah scroll – scholars and the people of the land, dignitaries and commoners.
It is joy over the very fact that we have Torah, and it expresses the love in the hearts of each and every one of us for the wonderful gift that God has given us.
Now, as we begin to read the Torah anew, we are surrounded by the joy and love we expressed toward it on Simchat Torah.
Equipped with all of these, we return to the mundane days, so that we may sanctify our mundane lives. The return to routine begins with the reading of the Book of Genesis, which tells of the creation of the world. There is a leader for the universe, there is a purpose for creation, and we have someone to rely on. Let us therefore set out with joy and put into practice all the days of the year the values we absorbed during the month of holidays.
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