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.

The Cockroach Wars Part 4

[This is an update report. From part 3, "Then I understood why these filthy creatures were so arrogant. They hadn't been beaten yet."]

As issues foment about us; draughts and the threat of Swine Flu, and arguments over where people may and may not live, and peace talks silenced by failures to agree on anything, leading to an impending nuclear threat from a neighboring country, which has its own internal problems, and in the midst of all this the defense minister focuses only on destroying Jewish outposts.

Is it any wonder that cockroaches of all ages walk with swaggers and bravado wherever their feet happen to take them in my apartment?

Well, if the Ministry of Defense is so tied up, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands. And I did.

Yesterday, just after the karaoke guy finished his concert, I saw a young adult sized cockroach mosey over toward the window like it owned the place. As it sat an the window sill, supposedly admiring the trash heap that the city had left a month ago, I came up from behind. And with a flick of my bare finger, I sent that cockroach into orbit.

No sooner had I launched one cockroach, but I saw another right on the kitchen counter. Usually a cup of water sends such intruders floating down into the sink and down the drain. But not this one.

He had muscular legs – 7 of them. Legend has it that he won his 7th leg in a dual. But that story is not for here.

That big muscular cockroach slowly and methodically walked right up to the table top where I worked. As his head came over the horizon, I sent a swift in-to-out karate punch that swivelled that roach’s head like a top.

Haven’t heard from that cockroach since.

The Cockroach Wars Part 3

The Noose Is Naught

by Jerry Waxman

[This is an update report. Previously, I had become frustrated with the behaviors of domestic cockroaches so much that I reached into an arsenal of inventions I had once collected to rid the house of these pests. The first weapon was a noose. I tied a string to the back of a refrigerator, and lay the noose end on the floor. When a cockroach would step into the noose and keep walking, it would literally hang itself. That was the plan.]

The next morning: I looked behind the refrigerator. There was no cockroach in the noose. It looked as though no cockroach had even been there. Yet they had been in other parts of the apartment – including right there in the kitchen.

Even as I stood next to the refrigerator, a teenage sized cockroach trotted arrogantly toward me and sat down in front of me, looking at the noose for a few seconds. It scampered away when it noticed me raising my foot. But the little delinquent didn’t disappear without letting me know that he and his friends were laughing at me.

The arrogance of teen cockroaches! Laughing at me in my own kitchen . . . I let it go.

This evening I checked again behind the refrigerator. A king of swishing noise had aroused my curiosity. Sure enough, there was a big cockroach. It had encountered The NOOSE!

The big cockroach had crawled up the string just above the noose’s knot. He was swinging, not hanging. Standing above the knot he was swinging like a pendulum, as smaller cockroaches looked on and cheered. Using the string’s leverage – true to trapeze artistry – the giant cockroach maneuvred himself to a place high up on the refrigerator. From there he observed as the younger cockroaches took turns swinging on the string.

Again the cheers and jeers of the gang of youthful, hooligan cockroaches followed me to an adjoining small room, where I found a bottle of floor cleaner, and started shaking it like a can of Raid. The cockroaches suddenly disappeared. They can’t read. They couldn’t even see that the bottle I had was empty.

They haven’t won this war yet… Stay tuned.

Meanwhile the city of Sderot has usurped my job. I had spent weeks with a garden hoe and rake to dig out all the thorns from the yards surrounding my block. The front yard looks pretty good.

And I had amassed all the layers of thorns and trash and rubbish that people had thrown there over the years into a massive heap. Thought about burning it, but the fire department wouldn’t allow it.

The city sent a team with a tractor. They cleared out all the thorns and bristles from the yards I hadn’t gotten to. There is even a little basketball court – sans basket – that they unearthed; a relic of an earlier age in this city.

Now there is a much larger heap in the back yard. The city of Sderot may take it away someday. But until they do, I am sure it serves as a fortress for cockroaches and the like who send their scouts and troops to my apartment when they see the opportunity.

Perhaps the city would like the honor of usurping my other job – making a better cockroach noose.