Hakkafot on Simḥat Torah

The celebration of Simḥat Torah as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon, not widely disseminated before the middle of the eighteenth century, that has its origin as an amalgam of the personal practice of R. Isaac Luria and earlier Ashkenazic customs that were modified by Luria and later authors of kabbalistic customs. The most comprehensive work on the history and traditions of Simḥat Torah is Toldot Ḥag Simḥat Torah by Abraham Yaari.¹ The following discussion is based on this encyclopedic work.

The festival of Simḥat Torah was created during the geonic period and is a by-product of the Babylonian custom of reading the Torah through on an annual basis. The hakkafot, the seven circuits of the synagogue, are based on the seven circuits of Hoshana Rabbah, which are a reminder of the seven circuits around the altar in the time of the Temple. The evolution of the concept of hakkafot on Simḥat Torah as a new ritual was a gradual and complicated process.²

The custom of taking out all of the Torah scrolls from the Ark before the Torah reading on the day of Simḥat Torah is first found in northern France during the time of Rashi and derives from an earlier custom to take out all the Torah scrolls from the Ark and perform the hakkafot on Hoshanah Rabbah around the scrolls. On Simḥat Torah, on the other hand, all the scrolls were taken out of the Ark, but there were no hakkafot with them or around them. Indeed, after the recitation of the prayers for taking out the Torah scrolls, the scrolls were returned to the Ark with the exception of the three scrolls that would be read from on that day. A variant of this custom was that in some Ashkenazic communities some of the scrolls were not returned to the Ark but distributed to groups of people so that there would be multiple Torah readings. This facilitated the tradition of everyone in the congregation receiving an aliyah to the Torah on Simḥat Torah. In Provence, it was the custom to take out all the Torah scrolls at the end of the reading to mark the conclusion of the annual cycle of reading the Torah.³

The custom of taking out all the Torah scrolls on the night of Simḥat Torah is first mentioned in a fourteenth-century Rhineland source, the Customs of Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg.⁴ However, there is no mention of hakkafot accompanying taking out the Torah scrolls. This custom was restricted to the Rhineland area and was not known in other areas of Ashkenazic influence.⁵

R. Yuspa Shamash of Worms, writing in the second half of the seventeenth century, still does not know of the custom of doing hakkafot on Simḥat Torah. He does add another custom, however, that of putting a lit candle into the Ark when all the Torah scrolls have been removed.⁶

R. Moses ben Makhir, a mid-sixteenth century Safed kabbalist, mentions an interesting custom in his book, Seder Ha-yom.⁷ It was the custom in Safed to take all the Torah scrolls out of the Ark before the beginning of Simḥat Torah and place them under a ḥuppah until the end of the festival. The scrolls were adorned with items of gold and silver and covered with silken and embroidered cloths. The people would sing and dance before the scrolls. This custom is based on a passage in the Zohar.⁸ What is missing from this custom is any mention of any hakkafot.⁹

The first source to describe the custom of hakkafot on Simḥat Torah is R. Ḥayyim Vital in his Sha·ar Ha-kavvanot. He writes:

The custom to take the scrolls out of the Ark and to circumambulate the Ark in the morning service, the afternoon service, and the evening service at the end of the festival, is a true custom. It is already written in the Zohar, parshat Pinḥas, page 256b, in the Raya Mehemna, and this...