Dancing

My fiancée told me today that she liked this video, because chassidim in it, sometimes old and with gray beards, did not care how silly they looked while dancing. They were just dancing.

And on Simchas Torah we just dance. Dance, dance, dance. Dance with Torah. Simchas Torah is not about intellectual appreciation of Torah. It is not about Torah changing our lives, improving us. It is not even about our union with higher spiritual realms through Torah. It is about being Torah’s feet and legs.

And that is why it is such a holy day. On Rosh HaShanah we establish our relationship with G-d; we are judged, we are measured. On Yom Kippur, we establish our unity with G-d, the essence of our souls uniting with His Essence. On Sukkos we take that high level of unity and rejoice in it; allow it to flow around ourselves; encompass us; we live in this holiness and make it our dwelling.

But on Simchas Torah we make ourselves into a dwelling. A dwelling for G-d. We become Hashem’s feet. This day gives us strength to declare in our behavior and realize in our minds, throughout the rest of the year, that Hashem is literally everywhere. In every, even the most mundane, aspect of our lives, in our minutest everyday activities. Everything about us — every atom, every hair, every sigh, every thought, every smile and every tear — becomes an expression of His Will and His Glory.