Extreme Moderation (Season 8 Episode 2)
Chochmat Nashim
15/12/2024
I am standing near the mechitza, the Orthodox separation between men and women in synagogue, a woman of 49, watching the men dance with the sifrei Torah, the Torah scrolls.
I sing along very, very quietly.
Hoshi’a et amecha [Save Your people] …
…And I am 7 years old, proudly waving a flag among a crowd of children at our Conservative shul. I watch my father holding a sefer Torah and dancing with joyous abandon.
Each child receives a red apple and a Hershey bar. We all stand outside on the steps facing 16th Street and shout symbolically towards the Soviet embassy, a few miles south of us:
One two three four! Open up the iron door!
Five six seven eight! Let our people emigrate!
The rabbi speaks movingly about Anatoly Sharansky. I do not know that within 10 years, the refusenik will be a free man named Natan, and that a few years after that, the iron door will really open up.
U-varech et nachalatecha [and bless Your inheritance]…
…I am 13, newly bat mitzvah. For the first time, I am old enough to hold a sefer Torah myself. It’s heavy; I can’t dance as wildly as my father, but I am learning.
Ur’em ve-nas’em ad ha-olam [and tend them and raise them up forever]…
…I am 18, at my college’s egalitarian minyan. We dance for hours. We join the Orthodox minyan on the quad, and form separate circles. Dancing, we carry the sifrei Torah through the nave of the gothic library and into the reading room, where there are Jews who do not remember that it is Simchat Torah. In the morning, all my muscles ache from dancing. My friend and mentor, Elka Klein, makes sure I am honored with kallat Bereishit because I am a promising freshman. I do not know that in only 18 years, Elka will pass away much too young fro
