Something very strange happens to the Torah just before Rosh Hashanah. It disappears from the weekly services, as if it has fallen into a void. The Torah is read in a cycle of weekly readings that is both completed and begun again on Simchat Torah, the last day of the festival of Sukkot, some ten days after Yom Kippur. Toward the end of the cycle, Moses dies a noble and tragic death, poised on the border of the Promised Land he will never enter. Then the round of weekly Torah readings halts and remains suspended for several weeks until the long round of holidays—Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur,
...more
