Simcha of the Hidden Torah: A Wonderful True Story for Simchat Torah - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

I heard this story literally secondhand it happened to someone who told it to the person who told it to me this friend of a friend happened to find himself on Simchat Torah in a drab development town in the south of Israel simcha story so he made his way down to the local municipal synagogue and who surprised there were quite a lot of people there everyone was dancing around with their Torah scrolls singing and making a lot of noise and then suddenly the singing and the dancing stopped a hush fell over the shul and an elderly gentleman disappeared behind the Ahram via Holy Ark and he brought out a wooden plank about three foot long he carried the plank to the middle of the shul everyone drew back and he put the plank on the floor right in the middle of the shul and then slowly he started to walk around the plank round and round and then as though summoned to some atavistic ritual two other elderly gentlemen joined him walking round and round in total silence and everyone stood there in total silence and watched after a couple of minutes they stopped the first man picked up the plank he returned it to its place behind the Aaron and the shul returned to a typical simcha store a scene dancing singing as though nothing had happened my friend's friend went up to this man and he said to him what happened what's going on there so he told him he said during the war me and those other two fellows we were all together in the same camp before Rosh Hashanah by a miracle someone managed to smuggle a safer Torah into the camp we were terrified we knew if the Germans caught us that was the end so we pulled up a wooden floor board and we hid the safer Torah under it in the floor when simcha Sarah came along the Germans were everywhere there was no way we could risk taking out the sofa Torah and so we just walked round and round in silence around the plank under which the safer Torah was hidden and so now every year the height of my sin for our sin consum costura is when we walk around that plank to remember that simplest or in the camps a circle is no beginning and no end on simcha Starro we finished reading the Torah and immediately we start again from the beginning in our joy at having completed the Torah we danced with it in a circle and specifically intentionally dovger in a circle a circle is endless the Torah is endless when we reach its end we're already back at the beginning the final words of the Torah are in the eyes of all Israel and its first words are in the beginning the circle dance of simcha storage oins the end to the beginning so that indeed the eyes of all Israel should be fixed on its beginning [Music] you [Applause]