Simchat Torah

A few weeks ago, Woty invited me to an event on Facebook, “Simchat Torah in Netanya.” At the time, I thought it would be perfect. I’d get off the French Hill for the holiday (because I have a mostly unfounded dislike of spending Shabbat in the dorms) and I’d get to travel to a different place for the holiday. Do the non-tourist touristy thing, experience the holiday as it’s done in non-Jerusalem Israel. I’m still glad I came, but I have to say that I really wouldn’t have minded staying home. I did a little too much moving around this Sukkot.

The trip was open to “15 CYers and Shechterers and Kedemers and their friends,” but Abigail and I were the only people not from the Conservative Yeshiva, which was sort of weird. (On a side note: I spent Yom Kippur with a bunch of people from Pardes, Shabbat of Sukkot with a bunch of people from HUC, and now Simchat Torah with people from CY; how is this happening?) Congregation Bet Israel in Netanya, as we discovered, is sort of like the Florida of Israel—it’s right on the coast and mostly populated by older, grandparently-people. Abigail and I stayed with a woman named Ruth, and she was really nice. I wish we had gotten to talk to her more, but we spent most of our time either at synagogue or asleep.

Services themselves were… interesting. Long, The rabbi said multiple times that if anyone needed to put a Torah down, they should hand it to one of the “young people” because “that’s what they’re here for.” Which… is pretty true. Very few of the congregants could hold or dance with a Torah. I almost feel, though, that if the congregation only had one Torah instead of five, the Rabbi could have done it all by himself. He was so full of energy; the only rabbi I’ve ever seen with that much energy was (ex-)Rabbi Stein. I heard one congregant make a comment that “he’s not a rabbi, he’s a shaman! He’s just putting on a show,” which is actually a pretty accurate description (the show part, not the shaman part). On Friday night the dancing concluded with the rabbi and a little boy (one of, like, four kids there) on a table carried by a bunch of students. When he took the Torah out of the ark again to read it, he did the blessings while on a student’s shoulder, and I was sure that all three of them—the rabbi, the student, and the Torah—were all going to drop and we would have to fast. This morning it was the limbo and dress-up hats. It was a little bit too crazy for my tastes.

In a way, I wish that I had stayed in Jerusalem for Simchat Torah. There would have been a lot of people dancing with the Torahs, not just a few students—and as the hakafot went on, the number of students dancing really dwindled. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to hold a Torah, but maybe there would have been enough energy to keep me from being exhausted, and if there wasn’t I could collapse in my own bed. Okay, so maybe I lied up there. But hey, I went to Natanya. I met a few people, had some good conversation, and danced with a Torah. I’ll just have to come back and spend Simchat Torah in Jerusalem sometime. Maybe after I get done with all this school stuff I’ll come back to Israel and do research on the holidays in Israel.