Let them eat, first dipping fruit in honey that trickles on their fingers, drips on their plates. Let the food be sweet as Torah in their mouths. You watch me. Your eyes follow my hands, the way they hold the knife, the way they cut semi-circles of apple as if you'd never before witnessed fruit being sliced, as if my hands were magic animals performing mysterious acts. All your energy is gathered, focused through your eyes.
Energy is heat.
Your eyes eat my fingers, lick them with intensity enough to make the fruit, the knife, my hands ignite. On Simchat Torah the Jews honour the holy books, the end of one cycle of readings, the beginning of the next. They remove the scrolls from the Ark of the Covenant, carry them lovingly, one by one, around the synagogue. Old Jews, their faces illuminated by emotion, wind the edges of their prayer shawls around their hands. With the ends and fringes of their ritual garments they reach their fingers towards the embodiment of the Word, touch the hand wrapped in the talith to the scroll, move their cloth-wrapped fingers to their mouths.