Episode Details

 What does it
really mean when the Torah describes itself as “Esh Dat Lamo” — a Torah of fire?
As we reach the final words of the Torah on Simḥat Torah, we discover a
remarkable tradition surrounding the Baal Shem Tov and the name of his
daughter, Adele—a name connected to the very letters of Esh Dat Lamo.
From Ḥanokh the shoemaker to a pair of torn shoes that changed a family’s
future, an unexpected thread begins to emerge: Torah is not meant simply to be
studied or even held. It is meant to become a fire that we carry into ordinary
life and then pass forward. 

For
me, this teaching became deeply personal. My mother was Adele, and she lived to
98. At 95, she was still working out and teaching women a fifth of her age how
to train safely with weights—and there is a photograph I treasure of her at
that age holding her tiny great-granddaughter, Orly Adele. This week, another
Adele in our family celebrates with her husband the brit milah of their
long-awaited first child. On Simḥat Torah we finish the Torah and immediately
begin again, because in Judaism nothing holy is meant simply to end. The greatest blessing is not merely
that our children carry our names. It is that they carry our fire.