Simchat Torah 5761 photoessay

These pictures try to capture the re-rolling from several angles, showing how much of the room the Torah occupied (physically):

in the Torah:

re-rolling the Torah:

Torah everywhere:

Rolling the Torah took quite a long time, probably longer than Damon (the person rolling the Torah) expected. But he persevered:

Still rolling:

Normally, only adults (those older than Bar/Bat Mitzvah age, generally 13) are invited to read the Torah. But on Simchat Torah, the children are given a group aliyah, and they also get to help wrap and unwrap the Torah.

everyone helps:

Eventually, we got the Torah rolled up so that the yearly cycle could continue.

finally all rolled up:

And then we had to dress the Torah in preparation for putting it back into the Ark.

dressing the Torah:

There is no beginning or end to the Torah, but there is a beginning to the scroll, which is also the end of this story.

In the beginning....: