Dancing Without a Limp: Rabbi Akiva, the Nova Dancers, and Simchat Torah One Year After October 7
Why we circle the bimah with even fiercer joy on the first yahrtzeit of the Simchat Torah massacre
Dancing on Simchat Torah? THIS YEAR? On the Yahrtzeit (first year anniversary) of our very own Pogrom and massacre? In our own land? Not in Poland. Not in Babi Yar. Not in Treblinka. The unthinkable happened IN ISRAEL. And yet, here we stand. And yes, dance we must.
The question is not “if” but “how.”
We KNOW that NOT dancing would hand the barbarians a win. The how is more complex.
I read this quote recently from Anne Lamott and it resonated; somewhat.
She said, "You will lose someone you can't live without and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."
Honestly though, there’s something overly defeatist about the “limp” — it seems like a decent coping mechanism for addressing the natural grief associated with the loss of a loved one who died of old age. Still, it’s not really resonating with my innate Jewish sensibility.
In fact the opposite seems to be the case. Our most deeply embedded Jewish neuroses kick into a particularly high gear in the throes of mourning. How so? Here is one example. People who are mourning are walking around in full on co dependent mode filling plates and making sure everyone else is “comfortable.” Have you ever been to a Shiva house? Have you seen how much food gets polished off?
Neuroses aside for a moment, these seemingly counterintuitive gestures of “othering” in lieu of a well deserved “selfing” come across as quasi ritualistic. Heres what I think might be going on. There’s this subliminal instinct to feed those that CAN eat, as a means of comforting the deceased. So while we think we are offering condolences, little do we know that we ARE the “condolence.”
We the unwitting “offerings” in this deeply ingrained psychic instinct.
That goes for dancing as well. Many of those who were murdered on October 7th were dancing. While we danced with the Torahs they danced AS Torahs. We were on opposite sides of the world, but we were dancing together. It matters not that the Nova festival was not a synagogue service. Far from it. Yet, we were indeed dancing together. We were all celebrating Simchat Torah. They were simply marking it by NOT celebrating it. Their Simchat Torah in many ways seems far more spiritually ambitious.
Either way, though the gulf between us this year is dimensional— who is to say that the gaps we bridged with our dancing LAST YEAR spanning the physical distance between Israel and America for example, and more so spanning the deep CULTURAL divide between dancing with The Torahs and Dancing at an outdoor music festival —-is less achievable. The bridge between them BOTH is achieved in the spiritual imaginative realm. Once we are working from a vantage point that collapses the barriers of time and space the afterlife is no further from our embodied existence, than say Haifa is from the Bay area.
And they WILL BE DANCING “UP THERE.”.
My gut tells me that all the big guns will be on hand to dance with them from Abraham and Sara, to Moses and Maimonides. Elijah will make it his business to be there and have some wine at the bar.
I know the Rebbe, who TAUGHT us everything we know about being holy subversives will be front and center.
King David will wind his way down the path, tranced out in his loincloths, certain to be an instant hit with the festival crowd( who knew?) the original “Raver.”
Let’s not forget about Rabbi Akiva. The original Jewish catastrophe dancer— who when surveying the ruins of the still smoldering Temple in Jerusalem, chose to DANCE; without a limp, right smack on top of the ruins— to the amazement of his colleagues who, paralyzed by grief, were tearing their garments and donning sackcloth.
Indeed it is the spirit of Rabbi Akiva who is present at every Shiva house like Elijah at every Brit. Making sure that every one has something to eat.
When we show up in Shul this Simchat Torah, we have to dance for those who can’t dance in this physical world. They will be waiting. They will be hungry for that connection. And we the dancers will feed them our dance.
We mustn’t let them down.
Much Love
Chag Sameach
Rabbi Yossi