Rain Dance

The end of vacation came way too fast, as I guess it always does. But with it came one of the most fun holidays of the year, Simchat Torah, when we celebrate the Torah, finish the yearly cycle of reading it, and start again at the beginning. It fell on Shabbat this year. Friday night, I went to Shira Chadasha, the traditional, musical community I have been going to frequently. We went through the usual Shabbat service, but after the Amidah, they gave instructions (in Hebrew, and I understood!) to stack all the chairs (several hundred of them) so that we could begin celebrating. Celebrating involves seven separate rounds of singing and dancing with the Torah scrolls. In this congregation, the dancing had a curtain down the middle to separate the men and the women. It’s okay though…the women’s side tends to have the better dancing! In this congregation, they do let women touch the Torah (which they don’t everywhere), so the men’s side had a couple Torah scrolls (the bigger ones), and we had a few as well. Basically, it’s dancing in circles, passing the Torahs around, people dancing while holding Torahs. Think the hora at a Bar Mitzvah, but instead of dancing around the Bar Mitzvah boy and lifting him (and his siblings and parents) in the chair, the Torah is in the middle being danced with and lifted. I think the seven rounds of dancing (separated by a brief couple of lines of prayers, all sung) went on for almost 45 minutes. It was really crowded, so sometimes it was difficult to stay involved in the dancing and too easy to end up on the side talking to friends (and avoiding getting toes stepped on), but when I got into it, I had a great time. After services, I came back home for dinner. It was my roommate Karen’s birthday, and both her parents and my other roommate Amy’s parents were visiting, so they had a big birthday dinner here. Karen’s mom cooked, and did a great job!

Saturday morning, I had usher duty at HUC. Each student has usher duty once or twice during the year, so that the services, open to the community, run more smoothly. Mine was Saturday. So I got there a half-hour before the service, at 8:30, as requested. I think the first people came at 8:55. Yes, I’m regularly among the first to arrive almost anywhere. HUC was also fun for Simchat Torah, although of course differently fun. One of the cantors organized a student HUC band, with keyboard, guitar, drum, and I don’t remember what else. So in the middle of the service, when we took the Torah scrolls out of the ark, the procession continued out the door of the sanctuary and out into a courtyard! I’m sure the musical instruments projecting onto King David Street made a lot of people not-so-happy. But we had a great time! We did the seven rounds of dancing in the morning as well, mixed men and women of course. Because we were in a huge courtyard (with less people than the night before), it was much easier to get involved in dancing, because there was more space. I had a great time, and I even got to dance carrying the Torah for a round! (Really, everyone who wanted to had ample opportunity. There were four Torah scrolls, seven rounds, and often at least one handoff per Torah per round.) After all the dancing, we went back inside, and did the whole reading, of the last chapter of the Torah and then the first chapter. Usually synagogues will have one scroll ready for the end part and another one rolled all the way to the beginning. Somehow, there was a miscommunication somewhere though, and the beginning scroll had not been rolled. So we got to watch the scroll rolled back to the beginning, which, by the looks of the rabbi and cantors who did it, is not such an easy task. It was a fun reading though, and I love that I could understand a lot of what was being read! With all the dancing, a long Torah reading, a Yizkor memorial service, and all the other holiday additions, it was an almost four hour service, but I actually enjoyed it a lot.

The other interesting addition to the service was the prayer for rain. It’s difficult to realize from the US how strongly the Jewish calendar is tied to agriculture until you’re here in Israel experiencing it. Sukkot really is at the change of seasons, for example. Also, traditional liturgy includes a prayer for dew from Passover (spring) until the end of Sukkot (fall). The other half of the year, we pray for rain. Because Israel is a desert, there really is a rainy season and a dry season, which I’ve never experienced before. I got here at the end of June. For three and a half months, no rain!! But I get ahead of myself. On Simchat Torah morning, the end of Sukkot, is when we switch from praying for dew to praying for rain. Usually, that prayer is two words (dew) or four words (rain) in the middle of another prayer. But on this first day of the season, there is a really long prayer for rain in addition. The prayer we did (which I can only assume was the traditional prayer, but I don’t know for sure) basically outlined all the reasons that the Jews deserve rain. Because of the righteousness of Abraham, the merit of Isaac, and so on. Except that each ancestor got several lines, and there were about 6 of them listed. It took up about a page, with the Hebrew down the left and the English down the right. I thought it felt a lot like a rain dance of some sort, which I guess it was! But I’ve never seen a prayer so powerful…

After relaxing the rest of the day Saturday, Sunday was back to school. It had cooled off somewhat, so instead of having the air conditioning on, we had the windows open. I was looking out the window in the middle of our first class of the day (Hebrew), and pointing out to a friend the ugly clouds that had been appearing more and more often in the last couple of weeks, although they hadn’t done anything other than block my beloved sun. A couple of minutes later, we were all distracted from Hebrew (which isn’t really that hard to do) by a new noise: RAIN! It poured for a good ten minutes, and it was all that we wanted to talk about. The first rain of the season even has its own name here, because it’s so important. It was sort of amazing to see rain somewhere that I’ve only known as warm and sunny, and after not seeing any rain for so long. And so much rain! Once it stopped pouring, it was much cooler out too. We were talking about the power of prayer and how amazing it was that the rain appeared the day after we started praying for it. It was quite an experience! (Ok, so apparently the rain doesn’t always come the day after the prayers change. But it was pretty cool that it did this year!) And for the record, it was gray and cold for the rest of the day, and rained on and off a little bit, but mostly off. Reportedly, we get on-and-off rain from now until Passover, but it’s more off than on, except during December-January or so, when it’s mainly on, and also cold. I’m not so excited about that. But right now, cool and threatening to rain is a bit of a novelty, so I guess I can’t be sick of it yet!

Also, I’m ready for another vacation. All of a sudden, the workload has picked up, and the next break is not until December. After having a month of classes constantly interrupted by holidays and trips, this is going to be a long couple of months. And on that note…it’s past my bedtime. Happy Fall!