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Dance With the Moon

by Jerry Waxman

What makes you dance? Does music make you dance? When you hear your favorite song on the radio, do you automatically stand up and dance?

Sometimes – many times in his life – a man just feels like dancing. And he uses the music in the supermarket or the elevator as an excuse.

The next time you just start dancing in your local Walmart or A & P, don’t be deceived by the appearance that you are the only one doing it. People are doing it all over the world — I think. Well, I never actually saw anyone else do it, but I’m pretty sure you and I are not alone in supermarket dancing.

Anyway, it’s not the music that makes you dance. Music just alters your mood, and that’s what makes you dance. Dancing is a natural reaction to a good mood.

I don’t know if that’s been scientifically proven. But in my extensive observations of dogs and cats and fish and cockroaches, I have seen that dogs and fish dance quite often, especially when their favorite food is nearby.

Kittens dance with each other until they’re in their teens, and then they aren’t cool if they don’t take life more seriously. Cockroaches don’t dance. They never have mood changes. They have no response at all to hip hop, pop, rock, or classical music.

Well, yesterday I did a bit of walking. I saw parts of Sderot I had never paid attention to before.

There are some really nice houses in Sderot. There are some really quiet neighborhoods also. And they are all within 30 minutes walk from the center of town.

The air was fine, there was a nice sun, and the site of these great houses, looking like the suburbs of Sderot, made me want to . . . .

You probably thought I was going to say “dance.” I was. But I just changed my mind. I wanted to know — and I still want to know — what those families did to get those houses.

Now it did make me happy to see a different side of Sderot. A side that doesn’t smell bad. But it wasn’t quite happy enough to break into a Fred Astaire routine.

Yesterday evening, after all that walking, the guys at the Bukhari beit knesset (synagogue) held a ceremony to bless the moon. It’s tradition to make a blessing on the moon every month about the 10th of the month as long as you can see it in the evening.

Last evening, there was a fine more-than-half moon. While I’ve participated in these ceremonies before, this time I found it interesting that it includes dancing with the moon a few times. Now, when these guys dance, they just jump up and down a couple times. No big tap number.

Later last evening, I wanted to know why we were dancing with the moon. So I looked at the words in the blessing. Most of the ceremony is about how the moon makes everything new. (The word “hodesh” means month and often refers to the moon itself. The word “hadash” means new, and it comes from the same root as hodesh.)

So it’s a light and friendly little ceremony. But then I came to the part about dancing.

It says, “We cannot touch you. Now, when our enemies dance and say they are coming for us, they won’t be able to touch us.”

So even dancing has to remind us of something we don’t like. It reminds us that we have enemies all around us.

When we crossed the Red Sea and saw Pharoah and his army crushed, we danced with joy.

So I have a question. Is joy just the absence of oppression and threats? Is there any way we could have happiness without misery? Would we even be happy if we had no enemies?

That last question gets to me. But not for long. . . . (I’ll be right back.)

Just as I was pausing to reflect on the profoundness of dancing with the moon, I heard a loud sound-truck with amplified music driving up the road. I went out to check. It was a procession to bring a new Sefer Torah to a nearby yeshiva.

The parade of men and women behind the truck was not too long. The amplified music made it sound bigger than it actually was.

Right behind the truck, the men were dancing rings around a couple guys who were holding the Sefer Torah and dancing with it. This was real dancing, not just hopping up and down a couple times.

As far as I know, bringing a new Sefer Torah to a beit knesset or yeshiva is just a happy event. There is no reminder of oppression or enemies. Just a time to dance for joy.

So maybe happiness has its own integrity after all. Maybe happiness is the emotion that brings us closest to our Creator. He really doesn’t want us to be sad and miserable. So He gives us chances to experience joy.

And dancing is kind of a two way street going one way. It makes no sense at all. You dance when you’re happy about something. If you’re not happy, then you dance to make yourself happy. So our traditions tell us to dance and be happy because, like all other mitzvot, it brings us in touch with our true selves.

We don’t need enemies to be happy. But as long as we have them, we should be happy they can’t touch us any more than we can touch the moon.

Sderot Israel, less than a mile from the rocket launchers in Gaza.

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