Children of One Parent: Shemini Atzeret 5786

There is a teaching in the Talmud so startling, so audacious, that it nearly takes my breath away each time I encounter it. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says that one who witnesses a person's death must rend their garments in grief. Why? Because it is akin to seeing a Torah scroll going up in flames. Just as one is required to rend their garments upon witnessing the destruction of Torah, one must similarly mourn the end of a human life (Bavli Mo’ed Katan 25a).

What a shocking claim — that frail flesh and fleeting breath are to be reckoned equal in sanctity to parchment and ink, that the life of a person and the life of a scroll are bound together as mirrors of one another. What a radical reversal of the hierarchies of the world — that every person, from the poorest pauper to the most privileged and powerful prince, regardless of skin color or national origin, ethnicity or creed, gender identity or sexual orientation, ability or disability, are all equally scrolls of Torah, all irreplaceably holy.

I think this bold rabbinic teaching opens for us a way into the mystery of the festivals we celebrate today and tomorrow, Shemini Atzeret and Simḥat Torah — days that, at first glance, appear as afterthought, as appendix, as addendum to the great festivals that came before, yet in truth carry within them a message of extraordinary urgency.

When the Torah introduces Shemini Atzeret, its description is surprisingly spare: “Seven days you shall bring offerings by fire to The Infinite. On the eighth day you shall observe a sacred occasion and bring an offering by fire to The Infinite; it is a solemn gathering: you shall not work at your occupations.” (Leviticus 23:36). There are no rituals or historical or agricultural associations here. No lulav or etrog. No sukkah or schach. No matzah, no shofar. Nothing but a day called atzeret, appended to the end of Sukkot.

What does the word Atzeret mean? It is enigmatic, multivalent. It can mean “to hold back,” to restrain, to pause. It can mean “to gather in,” to collect, to concentrate. It can mean “assembly,” the people gathered and bound together.

Each meaning is illuminating. To “hold back” suggests that there is something too precious to release just yet, something essential we must take with us before the season concludes. To “gather in” suggests that after this long succession of festivals we must distill and concentrate the essence, lest it scatter and dissipate when we return to ordinary life. And to “assemble” suggests that holiness is not solitary but communal, that what matters most is the way we cluster together, shoulder to shoulder, clinging to one another before we disperse.

Rashi, with his extraordinary gift for midrashic compression, gathers all these meanings into one luminous image. He envisions God as a human sovereign who throws a big, weeklong party, inviting all his subjects to attend. As the festivities draw to a close, he imagines the ruler urging his children to linger a little longer, saying: Kasheh alai preidatchem — your departure is difficult for Me. Please, stay back one more day (Commentary to Leviticus 23:36). God, Rashi says, is like that host who cannot bear to see the party end, the parent who cannot bring themselves to let their children go.

But I think there’s something deeper going on with this interpretation. God’s holding us back is not just about God’s reluctance to let us go. Rather, it is God’s way of impressing upon us that we are God’s children, precious and beloved. I cannot let you go because you matter to Me. I cannot release you because you are made in My image. I hold you one more day so that you will know how deeply you are cherished.

And if we are God’s children, then we are also each other’s siblings. If God is our Parent, then no one we meet is a stranger. No one is disposable. No one can be cast aside. God’s love for us becomes our obligation to love one another — not as abstractions, not as ideals, but as family.

From its very first chapter, the Torah insists: b’tzelem Elohim bara oto — all humanity was made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). Deuteronomy goes even further: "You are children of The Infinite your God…" (Deuteronomy 14:1). And the rabbis, never content with abstraction, spelled out the meaning: the first human was created alone so that no one could ever say, “My parent is greater than your parent.” If God is Parent to all, then every person is kin. The image of God is not the privilege of some but the inheritance of all. It cannot be divided, diluted, diminished. It belongs equally to each and every one.

And because it belongs to all, it binds us all. The rabbis taught: to destroy a single life is to destroy an entire world; to save a single life is to redeem an entire world (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5). In other words, if my neighbor bears God’s image, then my own humanity is inseparably bound up with theirs. If they are diminished, I am diminished. If they are honored, I am honored.

So Shemini Atzeret is not superfluous. It is the Torah’s way of saying: God loves you; therefore you must love each other. God cherishes you; therefore you must cherish each other. God holds you back because you are God’s children — and therefore you must treat every human being as family.

But if Shemini Atzeret is a day without ritual, a festival whose meaning the Torah never makes explicit, then it is perhaps not surprising that over time it did not remain solitary. It became joined to another practice, another layer of ritual, another way of drawing out its meaning — what we now call Simḥat Torah. 

Rabbi Isaac Klein observed that, logically, we ought to complete the Torah on the last Shabbat of the year (Guide to Religious Jewish Practice, p. 171). That would have been neat, tidy, calendrically precise. But our sages insisted otherwise. They taught that the siyyum of Torah belongs not with the closing of the year but with the closing of the festivals. Why? 

To make explicit the link between scroll and soul between the sanctity of Torah and the divine dignity of human beings.

That connection is enshrined in the Jewish legal tradition, which insists that we treat a Torah scroll with utmost reverence: clothing it in garments, crowning it with silver, cradling it close to the chest, kissing it tenderly, lifting it high for the congregation to see. A scroll too worn to read is not discarded but buried like a beloved. And even in the direst poverty, a Torah may only be sold for the highest purposes — to build a life through marriage, or to sustain life through study. Not even hunger or homelessness justifies parting with a scroll. That is how precious it is (Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 282: 1-3, 5, 10).

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the former chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, once remarked that our demeanor toward the scroll resembles the way we treat our children. We clothe it. We cradle it. We kiss it. And on Simḥat Torah we dance with it in our arms (“The Sanctity of the Torah”).

If this is how we treat parchment and ink, how much more must we treat flesh and blood.If this is how we carry Torah, how much more must we carry each other.If this is how we rejoice in scrolls, how much more must we rejoice in souls.If we are children of one Parent, how much more must we learn to live as siblings.

And yet, the painful truth is — we forget.

We kiss the scroll in synagogue and then defame the image of God in the street.We clothe the parchment in velvet and silver while leaving neighbors unclothed in need.We dance with the Torah but fail to rejoice in the stranger, the refugee, the rival who stands before us.

This is why, I think, God says kasheh alai preidatchem. Your departure is difficult for Me. Not only because God loves us, but because God fears what happens when we leave too quickly, when we forget too easily. And so God holds us back one more day, to impress upon us before we go: you are My children, and so are they. You are beloved, and so are they. You are cherished, and so must you cherish them. If you share one Parent, then you must live as one family.

And this year, perhaps that truth lands with special force. After two years of anguish, a fragile but firm ceasefire has taken hold between Israel and Hamas. There is quiet in the skies. The remaining living hostages have at last come home. Aid is flowing again. Families have embraced those they feared they would never see again. People are daring to hope. The world has paused to breathe. It is not yet redemption, not yet peace. The work of healing — of rebuilding trust, of reconciling with neighbors, of facing our shared humanity — has only just begun. But it is something: a reminder of our shared humanity, of the possibility that this small light could grow — that from the darkness of captivity and war might yet emerge a dawn of compassion and renewal.

That, too, is the work of these days: to remember that all of us — Jew and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian, every child of every nation — are still the children of one God. Shemini Atzeret reminds us that God holds us all close, that God’s love is not divided by border or creed or tribe. And Simḥat Torah summons us to carry that love outward, to let it become the work of justice and peace.

The contemporary philosopher and activist Cornel West put it this way: “Justice is what love looks like in public, just as tenderness is what love feels like in private.”

If Shemini Atzeret is about love — God holding us close, unable to let us go, impressing upon us that we are loved as God’s children — then Simḥat Torah is about justice — carrying God’s tenderness into our public life, into politics and policy, into systems and structures, into schools and hospitals and synagogues, into how we build community and how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst — not as strangers, not as rivals, but as kin.

Imagine a world where every person was treated as sacred as a Torah scroll.Imagine a society where every soul was lifted as high as a sefer Torah lifted before the congregation.Imagine our families, our friendships, our neighborhoods, our public squares, our nation, our world — if we carried one another as we carry the Torah, if we loved one another as siblings, children of one Parent.

On Shemini Atzeret, God holds us back so that we will know we are beloved children — and so that we will live as siblings. And tomorrow, on Simḥat Torah, we enact it — we dance with the scrolls so that we may learn to dance with one another.

May we carry one another as we carry the Torah.

May we clothe one another with dignity, and kiss one another with respect.

May we love with tenderness in private, and pursue justice with passion in public.

And may our dancing tomorrow — with scrolls and with each other — be a foretaste of the world God dreams for us: a world of dignity, justice, and peace, a world of children and siblings, held and cherished by the One who is Parent of all.

So may it be God’s will. Amen.