Chapter I
What it celebrates
In synagogues the Torah, the five books of Moses, is read aloud in weekly portions, so that the whole scroll is completed once a year. Simchat Torah is the day the cycle ends and begins again: the final words of Deuteronomy, on the death of Moses, are followed at once by “In the beginning” from the first chapter of Genesis. The reading never stops, and the joy of the day is the joy of receiving the Torah anew.
The yearly cycle comes from the Jews of Babylonia; in the Land of Israel the reading once took about three years. The festival took its name and most of its customs in the Middle Ages, and the dancing circuits spread from the 16th century.
Chapter II
How it is kept
On the evening and the morning of the festival every scroll is taken out of the ark and carried round the reading desk in seven circuits, the hakafot. Each circuit is a dance: the scrolls pass from arm to arm, and congregations sing and clap, often spilling out into the street. Children carry small flags, sometimes topped with an apple, and are given sweets.
In the morning everyone present is called up for a blessing over the Torah. The children are called up together under a large prayer shawl, the tallit, for the blessing of Jacob over his grandsons. Then come the two honours of the year, the bridegroom of the Torah and the bridegroom of Genesis, who are often celebrated with a festive meal.
Chapter III
Around the world
In Israel the day is also Shemini Atzeret and a public holiday, and in many towns a second round of dancing, the hakafot shniyot, is held in squares the evening after. In the 1960s and 1970s tens of thousands of young Soviet Jews gathered on Simchat Torah in the street outside the Moscow Choral Synagogue, one of the few public signs of Jewish life then possible in the Soviet Union.