Simchas Torah

Both Shevuos and Simchas Hatorah celebrate our connection with, or better, love, for the Torah. Two explanations differentiate between them. One is the Dubner Maggid’s well-known mashal of the young man who agreed to marry the king’s daughter without having seen her. Once he found out how beautiful and intelligent the princess was, he asked…

Vehoyisa ach same’ach (Devarim 15:15) is an explicit source in the Torah for the obligation to be b’simcha throughout Succos. The Vilna Gaon famously described this as the hardest mitzva of Succos – to rejoice constantly throughout the eight days of Yom Tov. How can we fulfill this mitzva? Of course, sitting in our succa…