We Will Dance Again
Ps. 30:12
Some poems were meant for music, and some music is about the movement, and an invitation to a dance. Sometimes the ability to dance feels daunting and it takes a hand extended with an invitation to get up and take the first step of relief, and liberation. And sometimes a dance is just joy, lived through the body.
There’s ample literary evidence that many of the psalms functioned in various ritual contexts of public Jewish life going back 2,500 years. One fragment from the Mishna describes in detail what the summer harvest holiday of Shavuot looked like in the Jerusalem temple, as the pilgrims arrived at the temple gates, with baskets of firstborn fruits as offerings of gratitude - and with a verse from today’s poem on their lips:
“The flute would play before the pilgrims, until they reached the Temple Mount. When they reached the Temple Mount even King Agrippas would take the basket and place it on his shoulder and walk as far as the Temple Court. When he got to the Temple Court, the Levites would sing the song:
אֲרוֹמִמְךָ֣ יְ֭הֹוָה כִּ֣י דִלִּיתָ֑נִי וְלֹֽא־שִׂמַּ֖חְתָּ אֹיְבַ֣י לִֽי׃
I extol You, O ETERNAL One, for You have lifted me up, and not let my enemies rejoice over me.
Ps. 30:2
King Agrippa, who lived during the first century CE, was the last Jewish monarch to sit on Judah’s throne before Rome’s destruction of the nation in 70 CE. What’s telling about this historical anecdote is that he is a pilgrim among the pilgrims, one with the people, as he raises up a ceremonial basket and his lips sing the same verse of gratitude. The verse is singular, but it sings the song of the nation, and the king is at that moment both the face of the nation - and just an individual observing his religious duty. It’s unclear who inserted this particular psalm into the Levitical playlist but it’s possible that they also sang the other lines from this chapter - which is about the theme of being lifted up from danger, and rising up with joy.
Over the generations, the personal tone of today’s chapter of gratitude rising to the occasion became not just about the individual’s appreciation of being raised higher thanks to faith, rising up from whatever depths of the soul -- but rather about the collective sentiment of redemption. If the original intent may have been the private supplication and praise for making it through another day or season - the later sages would read and adapt this chapter as a public text of yearning for collective uplift.
Such, for instance is this famous line, that can be read as an individual journey of transformation from grief to joy, and also reads as a national memory - and ongoing aspiration:
הָפַ֣כְתָּ מִסְפְּדִי֮ לְמָחוֹל לִ֥֫י פִּתַּ֥חְתָּ שַׂקִּ֑י וַֽתְּאַזְּרֵ֥נִי שִׂמְחָֽה׃
You turned my lament into dancing,
you undid my sackcloth and girded me with joy,
Ps. 30:12
When we are mourning, how can we imagine dancing? When our reality is saturated with sorrow, what will help us see beyond the pain? Again and again, these pslams echo the human plight and the mysterious ways with which we are able to overcome horrors and find ways to dance again.
The harvest holiday of Shavuot is soon upon us, yet another holiday among so many on the calendars that have been channeling to celebrate with war still raging with so much sorrow and mourning. The lack of reliable leadership and ongoing violence makes it hard to smile, let alone dance.
But will we dance again?
One of the Nova survivors and released hostages, Mia Schem promised herself that she will. Her words became a slogan of resilience.
We will, with time, with help, with the confidence that we are not the first people, each of us with our own pains and all of us together, to go through contractions and expand, hear the beat, start moving, and step by step, somehow, somewhere, dance again. It takes a hand, extended with an invitation, from within, from beyond, to rise, together, and hope, and live, and love, and dance, again.
Hope, healing, and may we dance again.
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