The Torah Is Ancient. We Shouldn’t Be.

In Rabbi Soloveitchik’s eulogy for Rabbi Chaim Heller, one of the great Torah educators of the twentieth century, the Rav describes what it means to be an authentic Jew: “It swings like a pendulum between the two ideals of maturity and childishness. The great man, whose intellect has been raised to a superior level… should not be viewed as totally adult. The soul of a child still nestles within him.”

He is an adult, knowledgeable and experienced. But, the Rav continues, “he remains the young and playful child; naïve curiosity, natural enthusiasm, eagerness and spiritual restlessness, have not abandoned him”.

And then the Rav finishes with something incredibly insightful: “If a man has aged and become completely adult… if he has grown completely in thinking, feeling, desire and trust, he cannot approach God. The adult is too clever. Only the child can breach the boundaries that segregate the finite and the infinite.” “Youthful” is not an age. It’s an attitude. We see it in our children: curious, interested, engaged, and excited.

Perhaps that’s the great challenge of the world we live in. The Gemara in Bava Basra tells us that Avraham Avinu had a coin. On the one side was a picture of an elderly man and woman and on the other side there was a picture of a young boy and girl. Why did Avraham have such a coin?

Rashi explains that on one side was Avraham and Sarah, the elderly couple, and on the other side were Yitzchak and Rivkah, the children. The imagery of the two sides of the coin is that of an elderly couple passing down the Mesorah to the next generation.

Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, the author of the Seridei Eish, has a different, beautiful understanding of this Gemara. Children and adults are very different and both make their own positive contributions and associations. Adults tend to be more settled and experienced, less impulsive and more thoughtful. On the other hand, when you think of a child, you associate them with energy, curiosity, exuberance and enthusiasm of learning. Usually, the attributes of a child and the attributes of an adult are mutually exclusive.

Avraham and Sarah were different in that they embodied both. Their outlook on life was not defined by age and so they had the unique capacity to live BOTH sides of the coin. They combined the wisdom and experience that came with their age with a palpable youthful energy and vitality. Even as they got older, their attitude towards God and to His miraculous world never grew stale. It continued to be infused with a youthful exuberance.

This is also captured in the classic book, The Little Prince. There, the author writes, “In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.” Adults are, by and large, dull, imagination-less creatures. They are literal, and the only truth is the truth they see with their eyes, trapping them within their self-made limitations. Children are the exact opposite. They’re wide-eyed. They are a clean slate and they are full of curiosity.

Our challenge is to live both sides of Avraham’s coin. To understand, on the one hand, that we have a rich history, full of tradition and mesorah. But at the same time to look at it all through the excited and vibrant lens of a child. To never allow our Judaism to grow stale and dry, but to always look for new ways to improve and to always look for new avenues of inspiration.

We say in Bentching, “Naar Hayisi Vegam Zakanti, I was a child and now I am an elder." With those words, we daven that we should have the wisdom of an elder but never lose the wonder and freshness of a child.

This is the secret of Simchas Torah. On Simchas Torah, we take the Torah out of the Aron and we dance with it. We dance with the same Torah that has been studied by generations before us. We dance with the Torah that our grandparents danced with and that their grandparents danced with, all the way back to Moshe Rabbeinu at Har Sinai. The Torah is ancient, but our relationship with it should never feel old. Simchas Torah reminds us that you are never too old, too experienced, or too sophisticated to dance with the Torah.

Think about the great Torah scholars throughout Jewish history. Men who had spent decades immersed in the most profound and difficult ideas of Torah would nevertheless dance with the Torah with extraordinary energy and joy. Why? Because they understood something that we sometimes forget. The more you know Torah, the more you realize that it is not merely a subject to be mastered, it is a gift to be celebrated. And so even after a lifetime of learning, a great Talmid Chacham can approach the Torah with the excitement of a child discovering it for the first time.

Dovid HaMelech understood this. When he brought the Aron back to Yerushalayim, he danced before it with such uninhibited joy that Michal, the daughter of Shaul, looked down upon him and was embarrassed by his behavior. David did not allow his position, his dignity, or his age to prevent him from dancing before the Aron. וְדָוִד מְכַרְכֵּר בְּכׇל עֹז לִפְנֵי ה' וְדָוִד חָגוּר אֵפוֹד בָּד. He understood that there are moments when dignity means putting aside our self-consciousness and allowing ourselves to express what we truly feel.

And perhaps that is why Simchas Torah is so powerful. We close the Torah, and immediately we open it again to show us that we are never done, never too old, too experienced or too sophisticated. There is always another pasuk to discover, another idea to learn, and another dimension of Torah to uncover. On Simchas Torah, we become Avraham and Sarah again: elders who still know how to dance like children.

The Torah wants us to grow older, but never grow old, gain wisdom, but never lose wonder, become more knowledgeable, but never lose your curiosity, and no matter how many years you have spent with the Torah, never become so sophisticated that you forget how to dance with it.