Parashat VeZot HaBerakha Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12
Parashat Bereishit Genesis 1:1-2:3
Haftarah Joshua 1:1-18

Dear TBE Community,

This Shabbat and weekend, the cluster of holidays observed or not observed across the spectrum of Jewish denominations in Israel and the diaspora is a vivid testament to the diversity of the Jewish people, whose identity was at last, just two days ago, recognized by Governor Newsom as an ethnicity.

I won’t focus on Hoshana Rabbah in this newsletter, but you can read more about it here. Today, I want to write about Shemini Atzeret, a holiday that was merged, in Israel and in Reform Judaism, with the holiday of Simchat Torah. It is important to note that Reform Judaism did not eliminate Shemini Atzeret. Rather, it observes the end of Sukkot, the end of the long holiday season, and the beginning of a new Torah cycle as one combined day.

What is Shemini Atzeret? It can be translated as something like “the eighth assembly” or “the assembly of the eighth day” – though even that is not entirely clear. The Torah, which is so outspoken and clear about Sukkot, doesn’t say much, if anything at all. The word “Atzeret” might mean a concluding gathering and that seems reasonable: The last day of Sukkot closes out of the entire season. Yet traditional observance gives it its own hag status, which is confusing: If Sukkot has eight days but if Shemini Atzeret is its own festival with its own distinct name, then how does it count as part of Sukkot?

Furthermore, Shemini Atzeret doesn’t commemorate a specific historical, agricultural, or spiritual event in the history of the Israelites, and there aren’t any specific customs or traditions associated with it. It’s as if the whole emotionally exhausting season of new year’s celebrations, the exuberant joy and overflowing hospitality of Sukkot, fades out into something quiet and nondescript. Yet maybe that is exactly what gives it meaning. It is reported that when the Romans sacked the Temple and entered the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctuary of Judaism’s sacred space, they were surprised that it was empty. There was literally nothing physical or material in it that they could identify as a religious object; indeed, there was nothing at all. And while there are historical reasons and rabbinic midrashic explanations as to why there wasn’t an ark – whether it was actually missing, hidden, or lost – there is also a lesson, or truth, about holiness in this: Judaism is adamant that you can’t see God, that God’s name is ineffable, that divine essence and holiness are not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, or in the trees or the sea waves, but in a still, small voice, whispering to you invisibly, inside you. (1 Kings 19:11-12)

Quiet light and contemplation are features of sanctuaries across religious traditions; synagogues, cathedrals, mosques, ashrams, nature. It is in the empty spaces that one can encounter holiness and divinity. And maybe that is also what a nondescript eighth, concluding day of a long, intense period of remembrance, atonement, and rejoicing comes to offer: a sacred break. A review before beginning anew. A contemplation of holiness, of what was and what has been, of “time present and time past, present in time future”, to quote the opening lines of Burnt Norton, the first poem of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Judaism is mindful of transitions and cycles. After Shemini Atzeret comes Simchat Torah, or, as I mentioned above, according to Israeli and Reform practice, both festivals happen on the same day: the quiet contemplation at the conclusion of the holiday cycle and the joy of new beginnings. The end in the beginning and the beginning in the end – Ouroboros or the Four Quartets; Amos and Psalms – mourning and dancing; dirges and joyful voices.

Since October 7, 2023, such layering of the Jewish liturgical calendar, the marking of an end and a beginning, of solemn conclusion and joyful beginning has taken on extra significance, in a way that makes one wonder about divine workings or human orchestration, or just coincidence imbued with meaning: When Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, it was Simchat Torah (and Shemini Atzeret). When the last living hostages were returned on October 13, 2025, it was the evening before the Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah festival — a real-life, historical, modern-day illustration of Jeremiah’s prophetic verses: After the desolation (Jeremiah 7:34), the sound of joy could once again be heard in the streets (Jeremiah 33:10) – maybe subdued, still saddened, but also defiant and grateful.

“If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable,” writes Eliot. For humans, it is true: time is unredeemable. What has happened, happened. We can’t go back and change anything. Every moment we have lived stays with us. The horrors of October 7 will be eternally present, as will the joy over every single life that was saved then and in the wake of this date.

Over the course of this last Torah-reading cycle and over the High Holidays, I have written often about concepts and ideas of redemption, about how the idea of becoming freed from time is essential to a religious yearning for redemption. How, on that day that the Aleinu conjures up in the words of the prophet Zechariah, time will be suspended as if on one eternal solstice. Redemption is a promise, an idea, an image that we can always strive for, even though our own human time is, in the words of the poet, “unredeemable.” We need heart — the famous teaching about lamed and bet being the last and first letters of Torah comes to mind — and strength so as not to feel lost in the cycles of endings and beginnings that can feel like a whirlwind or a rip tide. As we close the book of Deuteronomy this Shabbat, we say: Hazak, hazak, v’nithazek. May we be strong and resolute on our way back to new beginnings, on our way forward across the Jordan, toward our promised lands.

Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach,
Rabbi Julia Knobloch