Silent Dance

My good buddy Zale Newman has a close friend named David Woolf, who spent Succos in Israel around twenty years ago. David reported how he ended up spending Simchas Torah in a particular shul in Jerusalem’s Rechavia neighborhood. Yom Tov davening began in a regular fashion, with Hallel followed by a kiddush and then hakafos.

The dancing began like it does in any other shul, but then something startling happened. Right before the last hakafah, David watched as the men approached the aron kodesh and carefully removed a specific sefer Torah that looked like it was missing its atzei chaim, the standard wooden handles. But that wasn’t all: Along with this sefer Torah, they took out what looked like a floorboard that had been stored alongside the scroll. They placed the floorboard at the center of the shul, while an elderly gentleman was gently handed the sefer Torah. Then, the strangest thing happened. The shul became utterly still, and everyone began to dance in silence around this man and the sefer Torah he clutched so lovingly. There was no singing, no clapping, no noise whatsoever. This went on for about ten full minutes. As David looked around the congregation, he couldn’t help but notice that many of the mispallelim had tears streaming down their faces.

When hakafos were over, David ran over to one of the shul’s regulars and asked him to explain the strange dance he’d just witnessed. The fellow told him the following story:

In 1944, the elderly gentleman who had so lovingly held the Torah was in a concentration camp, where his slave-labor “job” was to make leather for the Germans in a nearby factory. Every day he would trudge to the factory, making sure to do his job diligently in order to stay valuable and remain alive. One day in the factory, he noticed a pile of discarded Judaica items. Looking closer, he saw, much to his shock and heartbreak, that among the items was the complete klaf of a sefer Torah, although it had no handles and no covering. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, he hid the sefer Torah under his shirt (which was quite oversized, due to his extreme malnourishment).