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Have you ever seen the same movie more than once? Do you love when it is on the screen, sometimes even quoting lines from that great flick? Most of us have at least one movie that falls into this category.

This year, Canada’s federal election will take place on October 21, at the same time as the holidays of Sh’mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.

With every seemingly worse piece of bad news littering our social media feeds and our news cycles and in the streets right before our very eyes, it’s fair to wonder: What if we simply can’t be happy, even when we’re commanded to? What if you just don’t feel like dancing?

The truth is Simchat Torah is not my favorite holiday.

There. I said it.

Every year, the season of reflection and renewal is culminated by the celebration of Simchat Torah (literally “the rejoicing of the Torah”).

I did not have a typical Reform Movement upbringing, and would say that the three years I lived on an island in Alaska are probably most emblematic of that.

Thanks to social media and electronic devices you can check in on Foursquare and read the Mishkan T'filah prayer book on a handheld device at the same time. Yet for all the modern inventions, the Torah remains unaffected.