Our world has a passion for novelty. That which is new captures our attention and creates a self-erasing cycle of ever more up to date personalities, events and art. In this dizzying age, what can possibly be discovered in returning again and again, like someone stuck with a single channel television, to the same program?

Yet we see Jews dancing in the streets on Simchat Torah, eager to read the story they read last year and the year before that. We understand that for many, it is a religious obligation, but where is the novelty in Adam and Eve eating the fruit again, watching Sarah and Abraham struggle again, witnessing the wandering Israelites sin and learn still one more time?

Contrary to what one might think, it is not an objection to novelty. Listen to the American naturalist John Burroughs: “If you wish to see something new, take the same walk you took yesterday.” That is the philosophy of Simchat Torah. Yes, you have read the story before, but that was you last year. As you change, the Torah presents new insights, new patterns, a new possibility to grow. Like the human beings who read it, the book is inexhaustible.

The joy of rereading is the joy of spending time with an old friend and learning how much there still is to learn about that person’s character and ideas but also feeling how well you know one another. It is the pleasure of recognition and novelty combined. When the sages say of the Torah, “Turn it over and over, for everything is in it” they remind us that the 101st reading will be different from the 100th, and it may yield the insight that you need for this moment in your life.

Each year, we revisit the cycle of seasons. Yet each new autumn has a different resonance as the years pass. The leaves fall differently and the bloom returns in novel ways. We read the Torah not as a circle but as a spiral, touching on the same place but knowing it anew, more deeply, with greater experience and understanding. I am looking forward to seeing what happens to Sarah and Abraham this year, for even though the words may be the same on the page, I am certain of one thing – it will not be exactly what happened to them last year, or the year before that. Everything old is new again.