{Originally posted to Rabbi Weinberg’s website, The Foundation Stone}

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is a formal order
The dance’s pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W.H. Auden, “Death’s Echo”

Just more than a week ago I was sitting in mourning. I emerged from my mourning and wandered in a daze until Isaiah spoke to me on Shabbat and offered words of consolation. Today, I am back to life as it is, with its joys and challenges.

How could I possibly handle all these different emotions on top of the complexities of life?

I dance with them.There are times I dance in formal steps and patterns, according to the rules. Some dances demand the formality, especially when sharing the floor with other dancers. However, the dance from mourning to comfort to joy to comfort to life, and then, to who knows what next, is far more complicated than the Tango or Salsa. It is, for me, a free-form dance to express the different emotions, but even more so, how I experience the chaotic fluctuations from one emotion to another. I do not dance to the formal steps but to how my inner music plays out its response to life’s calendar and challenges.

People often express wonder how I can teach in a very “religious” neighborhood one day, and a completely secular community the next. They assume that I am simply dancing a different tune on different days and in different communities. They are wrong! I do not dance a different step to the very different tunes of extremely different communities. Nor do I dance different steps to different holidays and commandments; a slow dance on Tisha B’Av, say, and a joyous step six days later on Tu B’Av. It is all one dance; the Dance of Life, the dance that expresses my response to life. There are no formal steps to my dance other than being in touch with how I feel and what I want to express at any given moment. The dance is an expression of my joy in life, and my small response to its many realities and revelations.

This week’s portion, Eikev, or “Heel,” begins, “This shall be the reward when (Eikev – Heel) you hear these laws and perform them.” Why the heel? Dance Steps. The Dance of Life. “This will be the reward when you dance to these laws and express how they affect you,” is how I interpet the verse.

The key word in this weeks portion is “Hear.” it is a challenge to listen to the music of life, the song of the Torah as it guides us through life. The portion reminds us of the importance of expressing how our ‘heels’ respond in the Dance of Life to our experiences on every level.

This portion also stresses the importance of love, as if to say, “Above all, let your love envelope you in your dance: God’s love for you, your love of God, your love of family, your love of self.”

Remember: Love is the greatest adventure of them all, and our Dance of Life should reflect that.

When and if it does, our Dance of Life becomes not only a thing of enjoyment, but a thing of beauty.

Dance with me to: Chipping Away The Pieces, help me dance my way out of Stuck in a Role and The Fear Underneath, so I can nurture The Question Machine.

Shall we dance?

Shabbat Shalom (The Dance of Life is permitted and encouraged on Shabbat!)

Rabbi Simcha Weinberg

Now that the Daf Yomi cycle has reached Meseches Shabbos I’d like to take this opportunity to remind those who are participating in it that my son, Rabbi Meyer Maryles (pictured), will be giving on-line in depth daily Shiurim on the Daf on the website Shas Illuminated. If you want more out of a Blatt Gemarah than Pashut Peshat, this site is for you. Once you learn the Daf, listen to this Shiur. It will truly enhance the Daf Yomi experience. Speaking of Torah – it was just Shemini Atzeres, the last day of the holiday season. In Israel that day is combined with Simchas Torah. I celebrated that day here in Israel with my son and his family.

On Simchas Torah we complete the yearly reading cycle of the Torah by reading its final Parsha followed by beginning anew the reading of the very first section of Bereshis.The day is also marked by doing Hakafos, both at night and during the day. Men holding Sifrei Torah circle the Bima seven times in special song. That is the formality. But it doesn’t end there. There is spontaneous singing and dancing after each Hakafa by those holding the Sifrei Torah as well as most of the rest of the people in the Shul (or in a Yeshiva as the case may be).

This practice has expanded to massive proportions reflecting great joy on that day, by those who learn Torah and by all who adhere to its precepts. The joy and exuberance by religious Jews – young and old – in celebrating this event on this day is palpable.

It doesn’t matter to what segment of Orthodox Jewry one belongs. All segments celebrate this day with the same exuberance.

It is truly the Torah which unites us all, right to left. Those of us who participate in this event are sincere in our feelings of joy. It doesn’t matter if one is Charedi or MO; Chasidic or Yeshivish; Asheknazi or Sephardi; Mizrachi or Agudah. It is a true moment of Achdus for all. Jews all over the world are all dancing to the same tunes and for the same reasons.

When I get a bit fatigued at the amount of dancing, I remind myself of this very plain fact and it renews my hope for the future. With all the things that divide us, there is so much more that unites us. Achdus is what Simchas Torah is all about. At least for me.

We have concluded the holiday season. One that involves great intensity on religious matters. Beginning with the month of Elul and culminating well into Tishrei – almost two months of celebration which begins with solemnity and repentance and ends in a great joy. I like to think that the Achdus in which this season ends is a sign for us about what our goals as a people should be.

Visit the Emes Ve-Emunah blog.

The Torah is the holiest of books in the Jewish religion. The Torah is the first 5 books of the Bible – in English – Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy…in Hebrew the names flow more easily, have more meaning. They are – Bereshit, Bamidbar, Shmot, Vayikra, Devarim.

The Jews and the Torah have a very unique and ancient history. The Torah is a gift that God gave to us thousands of years ago. It is something we as a people cherish. We stand when the Torah is taken from its resting place in the synagogue. We kiss it as it passes us. We stand as it is walked to a center table where it is read aloud, three times a a week and on holidays. We stand in respect, and in love – always in love.

On Simchat Torah – a holiday that translates as the “Happiness of the Torah” – we celebrate having successfully read the entire Torah over the space of a year. We dance with the Torah and sing. We gather our children and bless them before it – and then, having finally finished the very last word (which is the word “Israel”), we immediately start reading it again so that not a day goes by without there being more we have to read.

On this Simchat Torah, I sat with my mother and watched the men circling and dancing below. And I pointed to one Torah, smaller than the others and started to tell my mother its story. Unsure of some details, I turned to the women behind me and asked them to again tell me about it. These are the daughter-in-law and her sister of the man who owns the Torah, who saved it and brought it to my synagogue.

On November 9, 1933, the Nazis went on a rampage and burned synagogues, Torahs and holy books throughout Germany. They beat and murdered Jews – it was a national celebration of hatred that would herald more than a decade of agony and anti-semitism and culminate in the murders of more than 6 million Jews. It was called the Night of the Broken Glass – Kristallnacht – for all the broken windows and destruction. It should have been a signal to the world, had they only listened and in the deafening silence that resulted, it was a signal back to Hitler. Go ahead – murder your Jews, burn their holy Torah scrolls. Go ahead…and they did.

Yesterday, there were about 8 or 9 Torah scrolls around which the men in our synagogue were dancing. One was written a bit over a year ago in memory of a friend of mine and so I watched the men dance around Ziva’s Torah. Ziva was a beautiful and lively woman who died too young and as I watched her Torah circle below, I saw the beautiful woodwork on the edges of her Torah and smiled – she always had so much style.

But the one that caught my eye over and over again was the small Torah in the green velvet wrapping. The green material was a bit faded and looked very old. In 1933, that Torah had been in a synagogue in Germany when the Nazis came and set the building on fire. The roof collapsed the next day and it rained; the Torah scrolls in the synagogue were badly damaged. The elderly father who was in our synagogue for the holiday took the Torah scroll and tried to have it fixed but it was too badly damaged.

Most Torah scrolls are buried when they can no longer be used. This one could never be read again to a congregation to fulfill the commandment of reading the Torah out loud three times per week. It was taken to France and then, after the war, when the family came to Israel, the Torah came with them.

It is taken out each year, honored for its history – it survived the Nazis; today, they are long gone but the Torah remains. It is given a special honor – it leads the other Torah scrolls around as the men dance and circle and sing.

Seven hakafot – seven circles are made on the holiday – each circle taking long moments as everyone sings and dances. One of the circles was led by an elderly man who walks painfully slow. He is bent over and I cannot even begin to guess his age. He held his Torah, wrapped in the ancient green material and I watched as my mother’s eyes filled with tears.

Some 90,000 people packed MetLife Stadium to celebrate the completion of the page-a-day Talmud cycle in the largest-ever Siyum HaShas.

The gathering Wednesday evening, which was simulcast to some 60 U.S. cities and more than 20 countries, marked the completion of the 7 1/2-year cycle it takes to complete the Talmud (known collectively as Shas) at the rate of a folio — two sides of a page — per day. The program, known as Daf Yomi, was begun by the late Rabbi Meir Shapiro in 1923, and the first siyum, or completion, was celebrated in Lublin, Poland, in 1930. This year’s siyum — the cycle technically ends Thursday — celebrated the completion of the 12th cycle since that time.

“Fortunate is the person who sees, who experiences, this great gathering,” said Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz, the emcee of the event. “Try to visualize the singing and dancing that’s going on right now in shamayim [heaven] watching tens of thousands celebrating the masechtos [tractates] they worked on so diligently!”

The stadium event consisted mostly of speeches in English and Yiddish and short video tributes, including to the late Jerome Schottenstein, to whom the event was dedicated and whose family sponsored the ArtScroll English translation of the Talmud. No women appeared onstage or on the videos, but several thousand women were seated in an upper tier of the stadium outfitted with curtains that were pulled closed during the prayer services that opened the event.

Rabbi Malkiel Kotler of the Beth Medrash Govoha, a yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J., taught the final section of the Talmud to the crowd. Once the ceremony was complete, the crowd erupted in thunderous singing and dancing.

The new Daf Yomi Talmud cycle begins Friday with page 2 (all Talmudic tractates begin on page 2) of Tractate Brachot.

The streets of Jerusalem on the special day commemorating the city’s reunification. A celebration of youthful energy, enthusiasm, and love of the Jewish homeland. Everyone is included and dancing together from all backgrounds in an overflowing expression of unity. Original footage 2012 shot by JewishPress.com’s Jerusalem based videographer Natan Epstein. Music by Shlomo Katz, “There Will Be Heard”. Shlomo is seen performing at the concert next to the kotel (Western Wall of the Temple Mount) at the end of the video below.

If you are wondering where all the women are at the Jerusalem Day celebration, you can see them in the video made last year at the event by the Jewish Press’s own Yishai and Malkah Fleisher who captured the ladies side of the festivities in 2011.

30,000 boy and girls from schools around the country participated in the Jerusalem Day Dance and Flag Parade on Sunday, May 20, 2012.

The parade began with dancing in front of the Great Synagogue, followed by a march to the Old City, walking through the gates of Jerusalem, and finally, culminating at the Kotel.

The parade celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.

Photo Credits: Stephen Leavitt, Flash90: Noam Moskowitz,  Miriam Alster

WHAT: Nefesh B’ Nefesh aliyah mega-event with information, resources & workshops all under one roof WHERE: Hilton Ft Lauderdale Airport 1870 Griffin Rd, Dania Beach WHEN: Thursday, March 22nd at 6:30 –10 p.m. CONTACT: www.nbn.org.il/megaevent 1-866-4-ALIYAH * * * * * WHAT: Jewish War Veterans of America Point East Post 698 monthly meeting. Speaker Carol M Brick-Turin, director of Jewish Community Relations Council, will explain the role of the JCRC in the community. Coffee social will follow. WHERE: Aventura Community and Recreation Center, 3375 NE 188th Street WHEN: March 26 at 7:30 p.m. CONTACT: 305-652-5233

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WHAT: Luncheon honoring Holocaust survivors: Na’amat Or and Mazal will be holding a luncheon honoring Edith Castoriano, Ruth Gold, Anita Karl, Basia Lederman, Ann Rosenheck and Annie Rotter. Book presentation by author Stanley Aaron Lebovic, “Black is a Color.” WHERE: Aventura Turnberry Beth-Jacob 20400 NE 30th Ave, Aventura WHEN: March 28 at 11 a.m. CONTACT: raquelrub@live.com or call 305-965-4779

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WHAT: Talent competition for South Florida Israel 64 Independence Day Celebration – grades 6-12. Acts may include: singing, acting, dancing and stand-up comedy. First place winner receives airline ticket to Israel on El Al Airlines.
WHERE: Michael-Ann Russell J.C.C., 18900 NE 25th Ave, North Miami Beach
WHEN: April 25th at 8 p.m.
CONTACT: Romina at 305-932-4200, extension 148