Why Choose One Book?

On Simchat Tora I think about libraries.  The library was my solution to finding the book my niece wanted to buy.  During my visit to Israel, we took a walk to the library only to find that it was closed because of the holiday.

On Simchat Tora I think about libraries and books.  Books are a considerable piece of my identity.  I always read them, wrote them, loved them.  Books are retellings.  Situations change, but stories stay the same.  Books can't help but be repetitions because human beings only have so many stories.

On Simchat Tora Jewish people think about one book.  We mark the day we complete the Tora and start it all over again. 

Pogrebin reflects, "we hold both the ending and the beginning in the same moment. . ." (95)

In her framework text for my blog series this year, she continues to describe a joyous day. She shares her impression that as a people we love a book so much that we dance around it.  Moreover, we offer everyone a chance to touch it.  Although many holiday practices are still new to me, being connected through books and through access to books are concepts I very deeply understand.

On Simchat Tora it is time to read the same book again.  In Pogebrin's discussion of Simchat Tora, she quotes Rabbi Michael Strassfiel.

He discusses the value of rereading,  ". . . you come back to the same truth again and again, but you come back to it in a somewhat different way each year.  You understand it more deeply, or you come back to it thinking more deeply about it. . ." 

I commented to friends in different moments that the right books found me when I needed them, not the same book in different moments. It was difficult to remember a time I returned to read a book for a second time.  Anne of the Island came to mind, because I read the book both before and after I started teaching. Ironically, Anne's own choices as she vacillated between her goals of writer or teacher, highlighted a place.   The book titles in fact are metaphors for the idea of identity through expanded or contracted physical places: Anne of Green Gables, Anne of the Island, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne's House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside.

On Simchat Tora, I think about libraries, books, and stories. These days, I read a great variety of stories, seeking very specific objectives so fervently that I don't read most in their entirety.   As I find them, pick them up and celebrate or dismiss them, I spend too much time 1) asking what more I can do, and 2) lamenting how often I return to the same point again. Many books. Same place. If I had to choose one . . . What choices do I have?

Simchat Tora is holiday that is a kind of epilogue of previous holidays tied together.  Searching for the idea of one story for my year, I relived my allergist's words from months ago and my chiropractor's words from last week. 

Both asked me, "What do you really want to change?  Only symptoms or the cause?" 

Both asked me, "What do you want?  What are you willing to do to get there?" 

In her Simchat Tora chapter, Pogrebin offers a story inside the story. "I'm not the same person, even though I'm coming back to the same place.  Both things are true: I'm the same, but I'm different.  the Torah is the same, but it's different."  (100-101). 

The question Simchat Tora asks of me is not, "If you had one book, which would you choose?" Instead, the question is "Why are you choosing this book?"

No matter how many moments are 'the same', I am not the same.  A different book with different words will not necessarily be different nor make a difference, but the same book with different perspective can make all the difference. If at the end of the year, one book or one story would matter most, it should be my own.