Simchat Torah amazement

Last night we saw such an amazing thing!  They unrolled the entire Torah around the social hall at SOJC.  It made big, loose, square around that huge room.  One person held the roller from Genesis and stood still as they unrolled it. It pretty much reached all the way back to that person when it ended, and then another person stood there holding the wooden roller at the end of Deuteronomy.  All along the way,  the congregants were given two paper towels to hold it up gently from the top.  The rabbi, cantor and all those who were going to read from it, and small children were on the inside.  Everyone holding it up with paper towels were mostly shoulder to shoulder on the outside of the circle.  Three or four people were farther outside because they did not want to participate for whatever reason.  Mark was one of those.  I thought that was sad because it was an amazing sight and feeling standing there holding it and watching everyone locate their reading and then reading.

The rabbi did a "Torah Tour."  He read the first sentence to kick it off. Then various people read a sentence on the way around the circle, and the rabbi translated it and put it into context.  The sentences were chosen well, I thought, to tell the story.  Eventually the last sentence was read.  It was an amazing way to celebrate the Torah on Simchat Torah.  Evidently our previous rabbi started this just a couple of years ago, but we had not gone to the night time service here in Florida before. In addition to this amazing site, they also did the seven Hakafot with lots of lively singing and dancing.  There were tons of enthusiastic kids and teens.  There was the whole usual evening service, three aliyahs read from the Torah, and a Sundae bar at the end.  I did NOT make a sundae.  It was a lot of fun.

Today we are not going to the morning services because we just have too much to do in order to head out tomorrow morning by 10 a.m.  Last night I made a To Do list for today and tomorrow and it ran two pages.  I have to get started.  Mark's list includes taking the succah down.  Mine includes going out to get a flu shot because I think it would be better to have it now than to get on a cruise ship in October full of over two thousand people without it.  lol

Meanwhile my plateau continues. I'm 259.8 again this morning after eating 1305 calories yesterday.

I will be taking my laptop with me on the trip, but there will no blogs for the two weeks while we are on the ship.  I won't write one tomorrow morning, but I can write one Thursday afternoon from Cindy's house.