an unorthodox walk home

Posted on September 26, 2013. Filed under: Uncategorized |

i watched them dance, wild and boisterous, a never ending huddle of black brimmed hats and curling facial hair falling off their faces..in the middle of the sidewalk…they chanted, and roared, in ebbs and flows and just as it quieted and appeared to settle, the energy would swell again to a roar. I have seen this energy more than once before…Jewish males only, intoxicated, dancing with vigor in the face of apparent constraints. A young man approached…noticing my noticing…”Are you Jewish”…”yes”…. “come dance with us”. I respectfully declined, but did not shut him out. He spoke of the events that had elicited such celebration… “This is the evening we dance to celebrate god giving us the torah…on all other days we study the torah because the torah is an academic document…but today we dance because…you see…everyone learns differently…you might be smarter than me…and understand the torah differently than me…but everybody has two legs and can dance, so we dance tonight so that everyone can experience the torah the same…to be equal.” I silently rifled through the obvious contradictions before me…but i looked in his eyes…he was young, not the old guard…but my contemporary…genuine in his belief and intention. Again, he invited me to dance with the group, to similarly experience the torah with him…I answered, “I will not go and dance over there, or say a prayer with all of you, but I will dance with you right here in this spot if you want to dance with me”…i agreed to dance not because I felt like a jew, but because his purpose was inclusivity, be it heavily bounded and objectively limited. He put his arms on my arms…a jolt of energy flowed through my heart, we danced…a connection made, that transcended his faith and my lack thereof…and I walked in the night, connected to him, that has chosen my opposite, as I am connected to all.