We now arrive at the apex of Jewish practice — a rich and beautiful theater of the absurd. This Simchat Torah, a Jew will take a book off the shelf, kiss it, dance with it, jump, twirl and holler with it. Alone.
The late Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, whose presence will be missed this Simchat Torah, once noted: “This is a Jew. One who kisses a book before and after reading from it.”
But what about dancing with a book? Is that typical human behavior? Scrolls are books, too. And this year, no synagogue, no scroll, no circles of Jews whirling and twirling together, dancing with the Torah — just you in the privacy of your own home, dancing with whatever book of Torah you might pick up off the shelf.
What’s behind this notion of dancing with a book? Having lived a Jewish life of books, I understand. My dad would visit the public library every two weeks and snatch books off the shelf like a lion tearing at his prey. The entire backseat of the car was filled with them. Within a day, they would be strewn throughout the house.
My mother would complain, “Can’t you put them back in place?”
To which he would respond, “That is their place. This is a Jewish home and a Jewish home has to have books everywhere.”
Of course, only on tables and other respectable surfaces. If a book was seen on the floor, my father would chide us, “Books are people, treat them with respect.” Real book lovers don’t say, “I’m reading ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ ” They say, “I’m reading Steinbeck,” much like a Jew studying the “Mishneh Torah” will tell you he’s “learning Rambam.”
Rambam — Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon — was a person. You get into his magnum opus, the “Mishneh Torah,” ask the right questions, scratch your head, read all the little men lined up around the page, argue, pound your fist on the table and scratch your head some more. And you’re not just studying what he wrote. You’re learning him — the person.
This year, no synagogue, no scroll, no circles of Jews whirling and twirling together, dancing with the Torah — just you in the privacy of your own home, dancing with whatever book of Torah you might pick up off the shelf.
I once asked my uncle, a successful actor, “Who are you really? The person I am meeting now, or the person acting on set?”
He paused and said, “Actually, it sounds crazy, but I feel most myself when I am acting as someone else.” After another pause, he added, “Especially someone very different from myself.”
The artist is found in the act of his art. So, too, in a book, do we find the true, deep, raw and undiluted author, more so than we do in person. The same goes for the author of the Torah we hold in our hands — we hold Him when we hold that Torah scroll, book, Talmud or midrash. Or, in fact, the work of any dedicated student who has struggled day and night with the words and teachings of this divine wisdom we call Torah. Because that struggle itself is divine. Inside that struggle, too, is the original author Himself.
And it’s such a different experience — similar to when I heard British classical guitarist Liona Boyd for the second time. I was a teenager. The Classical Guitar Society had just started up in my hometown of Vancouver. We brought out Liona Boyd for a concert and a workshop. After the workshop, I had the opportunity to chat with her. Here I was, half her age, and yet she took the time to speak with me as if I were her peer. She really listened to me.
Then she gave another concert, and that was the first time I really heard her play. Not her music. Not her guitar. Her. Listening to a good friend I had just made, I discovered something deeper about her — more so than I could have known from any conversation with her.
But here we’re not talking about a chat with a sweet woman. This is about a deep meaningful interaction situated at the vortex of the universe.
When you perform a mitzvah, you’re a servant of the Supreme Being doing His bidding; fulfilling the mission assigned to your soul. When you learn Torah, you’re God’s child, sitting with Him at one small table, discussing His thoughts.
The conversation between a child and parent is so much deeper than any conversation with a friend. No outsider can ever really understand that connection. The parent’s best student may know more, but the child can empathize in a way no outsider can because inside the parent and child are really one.
The artist is found in the act of his art. So, too, in a book, do we find the true, deep, raw and undiluted author, more so than we do in person. The same goes for the author of the Torah we hold in our hands.
So in this conversation, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the words of the parent and the words of the child. The parent speaks words only the child can understand, and the child speaks words the parent hadn’t realized he or she wanted to say. This is a conversation in which the parent says, “My child, you’ve got me there again!”
It’s a communion in some ways deeper than prayer. Prayer is about you; about sharing with God what’s in your heart, and where you’re at right now. Learning Torah is about Him — discovering Him and His thoughts about the world; about the meaning of all those mitzvot He gave you; about working that through with Him.
Sometimes, after racking your brains to disentangle a talmudic debate, desperately seeking the meaning of a story, deciphering the encoded message of a mysterious passage of Zohar, or clarifying the application of a halachah in your particular situation, you just have to sit back and say, “Wow, that is so beautiful. I have to share this with somebody. Anybody.”
And sometimes you feel like Abraham when he learned of the Sodom and Gomorrah elimination decree. You can’t help but say, “Please, Dad, I really hope you don’t mind me asking, but why? How could You want such a thing?”
Abraham asked. Moses asked. Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef asked. The Baal Shem Tov asked. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, asked. Sometimes they found answers. Sometimes they made a deal. Sometimes they had to walk away and say, “I don’t understand. There are many things I don’t understand. What’s the big deal that a mortal can’t understand the Creator of heaven and Earth?” And you, too, must ask.
Is it absurd to dance with a book? Is it absurd to dance with the Maker of heaven and Earth? Yes, certainly. So, close the door and nobody will see. Dance alone with God.
We are once again dancing with God’s Torah — as we have done for over 3,000 years since we started learning it with Moses. Sometimes we pull together, sometimes we pull apart and return again. It is in this back-and-forth, push-and-pull that we discover there is something beyond our understanding. Inside here is God. And now that we know Him from His book, we can find the Infinite everywhere; in all things.
Is it absurd to dance with a book? Is it absurd to dance with the Maker of heaven and Earth? Yes, certainly. So, close the door and nobody will see. Dance alone with God.
Rabbi Tzvi Freeman writes for Chabad.org. He is the author of “Bringing Heaven Down to Earth” and “Wisdom to Heal the Earth.”
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