On Simhat Torah, we dance with the Torah scrolls. We grasp Torah as a tree of life that can help carry us on our journey. Despite our mortality, the tree of life enables us to touch immortality by connecting us to the universe and to God. We hold the past, we see the present, and we hope for the future. On Simhat Torah, we read the last verses of the Torah and immediately begin again with Genesis.
      The first letter of the Torah is the letter “bet” of bereishit –in the beginning. The last letter of the Torah is the lamed, the last letter of the word yisrael/the people of Israel. Why? One opinion is the two letters form the word bal, which is the Aramaic word for “not.” The Torah then is a book of law that tells us what to do and even more what not to do, since there are more negative commandments than positive ones. A second opinion is the two words are the essence of the Torah. Every life starts with “in the beginning”. That beginning is Torah. The last word is yisrael/Israel. We are Israel, the ones who wrestled with gods and humans and prevailed. This is the Torah of life.
      A third opinion suggests we have to imitate Moses, who in the book of Deuteronomy looks back over his story and that of the people to see it from the perspective of the passage of time. If you take the last letter and the first letter and read them from that perspective, they form the word lev-heart. It is not a book of no’s but rather a book of love. We are meant to see our lives with compassion, which includes its truth—all of it--the broken pieces and the whole, the mistakes and the masterpieces, and the tragic and the joyous. The Torah is a book of open heartedness that seeks connection with the other images of God with whom we share this world.
      Rebbe Nahman is supposed to have said: The whole world is only a very narrow bridge and the essential thing is not to be afraid at all. (kol ha-olam kulo gesher tzar me’od ve-ha-ikkar lo le-faheid klal). His teaching is understood to mean that despite the difficulties of this world, we should not succumb to fear. But there is another way to read this. The beginning of the phrase literally means the whole world is only a bridge, meaning that all of existence is ultimately only a bridge. A bridge allows you to cross the void. Instead of being blocked on your journey you can move ahead to encounter what is on the other side. Life then is only about one thing—encounter with yourself, encounter with others, and encounter with the Other or the universe. These encounters don’t have to be grand or transformative. Their width or depth are not critical. It is the encounter that makes all the difference. The encounter is Torah.
                 The whole world is an encounter. Don’t be afraid of the possible.