| One of the things I love about Judaism is that no matter how long you have been living it, there is always something more to learn.
This week, I felt inspired to learn more about the holiday of Shemini Atzeret — one that is often overlooked or gets lost at the tail end of a long month of holidays. I found myself wanting to understand it better.
As I was thinking about this week’s message, I spent some time learning more.
Shemini Atzeret comes immediately after the seven days of Sukkot. It is a distinct Jewish holiday, and its name means the “eighth day of assembly.” There is a beautiful teaching about the holiday that imagines God, after the days of Sukkot together, essentially saying: don’t leave yet. Stay with me one more day.
I understand that feeling a lot better at this stage of my life.
Our three kids are adults now, building lives of their own. The times when Lori Ann and I have everyone home and around the same table are less frequent than they once were. When they are home, I find myself wanting dinner to last a little longer. One more conversation. One more story. One more hour before everyone heads in different directions.
Suddenly, a holiday I had always wondered about made a lot more sense to me.
Maybe that is a new tradition for me this year: allowing a part of our tradition I had long wanted to understand more deeply to teach me something new.
And then comes Simchat Torah.
We finish reading the Torah and immediately return to the beginning. Same Torah. Same words. Same stories. But we are not the same people who read them a year ago.
I have lived in Columbus my entire life and have been involved in our Jewish community for decades. I thought I knew it pretty well.
Serving as Chair of JewishColumbus has shown me how much I still have to learn.
I have met people I probably never would have known otherwise. I have learned more about our synagogues, schools, agencies, Israel, and the people who quietly make this community work every day. I have listened to people whose Jewish lives look very different from mine. And sometimes those conversations have made me look differently at things I thought I already understood.
That may be one of the lessons I most want to carry into this new year: never assume you are finished learning, especially about something you love.
Maybe there is a Jewish tradition you have never explored. A text you have never studied. A person in our community whose story you have never heard. Maybe there is something you think you understand that deserves another look.
Read something. Attend a class. Have a conversation with someone you might not normally talk to. Ask a question you thought you already knew the answer to. And when you think you have figured something out, be willing to look at it again.
Because these two holidays leave us with two pretty remarkable lessons.
On Simchat Torah, we reach the end, celebrate everything we have learned, and then go right back to the beginning.
And Shemini Atzeret, the holiday I finally made time to explore more deeply this year, asks us to do something even simpler: don’t leave yet. Stay a little longer.
Maybe there is wisdom in both.
Stay long enough to appreciate what is in front of you. And remain curious enough to see something in it you have never seen before.
After 57 years, Shemini Atzeret taught me something new this week.
Perhaps that is the gift of our tradition. No matter how long we have been part of it, it is never finished teaching us.
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