Celebrating Simchat Torah with Reading - and Sammy Spider!

Reading to children has some amazing benefits. Stories introduce new words and ideas to children, and can help them learn about complex concepts and develop their own imagination. Strong readers are able to participate fully in class, and as a result can develop more confidence as well. Reading is relaxing and a wonderful way for a child to spend quiet time alone or to have one-on-one time with a parent. On Simchat Torah we finish reading the Torah - the Jewish people's favorite story! - and begin again. Just as your little one may have a favorite story that s/he wants you to read over, the Torah plays that role for Jewish people.

What better time to help a child discover their favorite book than during Simchat Torah? If you're looking for a new book, try the Children's Books Guide list of the Top 100 Children's Books of All Time.

Looking for a book for Simchat Torah? Read Sammy Spider's First Simchat Torah!

Sammy Spider crawls down his web to inspect the candy apple Josh has attached to his Simchat Torah flag. When Josh leaves for synagogue, he doesn't notice the spider stuck to his apple! Atop Josh's flag, Sammy joins the Simchat Torah parade, dances with the Torah, and learns about this very special holiday in the Jewish year. Yound readers will learn how Simchat Torah is celebrated, as Jews finish reading their "favorite book," the Torah, and start all over again, just as Josh loves to do with his own books! 

Celebrate Simhat Torah with Josh and Sammy!

From his miniature Torah scroll to making candy apples with his mother, Josh celebrates Simchat Torah many ways. As you read along, you can participate as well!

Make a Miniature Torah Scroll

You will need: rolls of Smarties, colorful paper, ribbon

Cut paper into 4 1/2 x 2 inch strips. Roll two packs of Smarties into the paper and tie with ribbon.

Candy Apples

You will need:
10 small red apples
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
3/4 cup water
8 drops red food coloring
10 small wooder dowels or popsicle sticks
1 sheet of wax paper

Wash and dry apples. Insert dowels or sticks. Mix sugar, corn syrup, and water in a small saucepan (deep enough to dip the apples) and bring to a boil. Add food coloring, and boil for 20 minutes. Do not stir. Remove pan from stove. Dip the apples one at a time and place on wax paper to cool.

Color the Israeli Flag

Printable flag available here.

Tolerance, Torah and Tears in Tennessee

Beth Huppin, a Judaics teacher from Seattle and recent recipient of the National Covenant Award, shares an account of her unusual Rosh Hashanah experience this year. Traveling with her husband, Huppin, who generally attends Shul on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, agreed “with some ambivalence” to visit Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee instead. This school, famous for creating a monument to Holocaust victims of Nazi Germany using paper clips as a means for understanding the staggering number of victims, became the subject of the documentary film “Paper Clips” and the Kar-Ben book Six Million Paper Clips. Huppin’s husband, also an educator, has taught about the Whitwell program in his classes and wanted to visit.

The project, begun about ten years ago, was started by now retired principal Linda Hooper, who remains involved. The school continues to train student docents to give tours to the public, archives letters that continue to arrive “from every corner of the world,” and collects artifacts for the project’s resource room. The day Huppin visited, a class of African-American students from Chattanooga also arrived, learning about the Holocaust from the young white Christian docents -- on Rosh Hashanah.

Two artifacts, in particular, caught Huppin’s attention: a Torah and an Aron Kodesh (a Holy Ark), in a place in America where most people have never met a Jewish person. She writes:

With tears in my eyes I explained to Linda that this was my first Rosh HaShanah not in synagogue. I told her that my friend, Shelly, had reminded me that there is more than one way to worship. Entering this room and seeing the Torah, I was overwhelmed. Being a religious person herself, I could see that Linda understood. “God sees and hears prayers in many different forms,” she assured me.

Curious students asked to see the Torah, and Huppin and her husband retrieved their tallitot from their car and carefully unrolled the Torah. Huppin chanted from the beginning of Numbers in Hebrew, and the mainly religious (Christian) student body knew there was common ground. After her reading, Huppin relates:

A girl came up to me after the students left, in tears, so moved to have experienced a Torah reading on Rosh Hashanah. It wasn’t the right Torah reading. (I had considered rolling the Torah to the Akedah, but there wasn’t time.) And there wasn’t a minyan. And we hadn’t recited the requiredt prayers. But, as Shelly told me, worship comes in many forms. And we had just experienced it.

I told Linda that this experience would not have been the same if it hadn’t been Rosh Hashanah. “Well then, it must be beshert,” she (a woman who had lived her whole life in rural Tennessee) said with a grin, using the Yiddish word that loosely translated means “fate.”  Of course.

Beshert indeed.

Read Huppin’s 10 page account of her experience here.

Celebrate Simchat Torah!

October 1st is Simchat Torah! This is the day when we celebrate the end and beginning in the cycle of our Torah readings. Why not make a new tradition in your home or classroom by reading your favorite book from start to finish? Try the new Sammy Spider's First Simchat Torah!


In Sammy's latest adventure, he crawls down his web to inspect the candy apple Josh has attached to his Simchat Torah flag. When Josh leaves for synagogue, he doesn’t notice the spider stuck to his apple! Atop Josh’s flag, Sammy joins the Simchat Torah parade, dances with the Torah, and learns about this very special holiday in the Jewish year.

Here's how to make candy apples for Simchat Torah!
10 small red apples
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
3/4 cup water
8 drops red food coloring
10 small wooden dowls or popsicle sticks
1 sheet wax paper

Make sure an adult helps with the recipe! Boiling sugar is very hot.

Wash and dry apples. Insert sticks or dowels at stem or base. Mix sugar, corn syrup, and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and add food coloring. Boil for 20 mins. Do not stir. Remove pan from stove and dip apples into mixture one at a time. Place on wax paper to cool. Enjoy at your Simchat Torah parade!