My Mother Died on Simchat Torah

The completion of the annual cycle,when we read the last portion, whenwe begin to believe, as we have throughout

the centuries, that this time we will get it rightand be finished with this labor, thisrolling up, like Sisyphus and his rock,

the heavy stone of commandmentsand wrestling with—what to call It?—It doesn't even have a name—that Holiness,

that Tyrant, one moment embracing usas if we were his children and anothersmiting us as if we were better off as the nothing

we were before He claimed creditfor creating us—yes, this time we'll chantthe very last passage once and for all. The one

about Moses, the favored son, whom He loved,above all the others, the one whoHe asked to do His dirty work—to corral

all of us complainers into that dreamland,that grand retirement home, only to be told,at the last moment, that—though he

did wonders, he can see the place,he may not enter, all his yearningalmost-fulfilled. Better to have stayed

a shepherd, this leader must have thought.But we read:No prophet has risen like Moses,whom the Lord knew face to face.

Just as we pronounce these closing words,again—for the how-many-millionth-time?—clasping again to the hope that we're finished

with all this repetition, and just as the rabbiis about to seal the magnum opus for good,and he raises her arms in benediction

above us, exhausted as we arefrom the long week of work and heartaches—and we rise and sway and he squints,

assessing all the secrets that lay hidden there,and just as he is confirmed in his decisionto rollback the scroll and once again place

his pointer under the opening words and chant:In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth—at that precise moment, between the last words

and the first, between the standing upand the sitting down and the starting all over again,just as the Sabbath sun burns down

into its deepest flame—you decide it's timeto depart, you don't need to recite all those words again.You know the whole story by heart.

Sisyphus and his rock