At the end of Sukkot are two holidays called Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah (“Torah celebration”).
In Israel and among liberal Jews, these are combined into one holiday. In other communities, they are two separate holidays.
On Shemini Atzeret, Jewish communities recite the first prayer for rain of the year. Some people also still have their meals in the sukkah on this day.
Simchat Torah celebrates the end of the yearly cycle of public Torah readings, and the beginning of a new cycle. The main celebrations of Simchat Torah take place in synagogues during evening and morning services. The last section of the last book of the Torah is read. Then, the first part of the first book is read, often from a different Torah.
Some communities also have the tradition of unrolling an entire Torah scroll and reading well-known stories.
The highlight of Simchat Torah is the hakafot (literally, going around in circles). This is when the congregation sings and dances with the Torah scrolls around the synagogue seven times. In some communities, people might also wave colorful flags while they dance. In some communities, people say they become the ‘feet’ of the scrolls. The joyous celebration can last for several hours.
Text adapted from English Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0.
Second laps after the Simchat Torah holiday at the Western Wall by שי2 on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0.
