Pure Joy

My Arms hurt from carrying a Torah Scroll. My first one! It was so exciting. I think, based on what I saw at the Conservative Synagogue I went to for Simchat Torah, that I am considering personally renaming Simchat Torah to "International Day of Silliness." One leader/reader brought up a bunch of hats with him and changed hats every few paragraphs throughout his reading. When they opened the Ark, they had all the children gathered up at the front, and when it was opened, it turned out the whole thing was filled with, in addition to Torah scrolls, balloons and ballooon animals, which they handed out to the kids.

It was a great and beautiful day. We pushed all the chairs back and danced like fools who love their Torah. I even got a chance to carry one. And I danced with a lovely 3-year-old girl named Jessie, as we all went outside in the sunshine for our final Hakafah. Someone even told me what a Hakafah is - a circuit. Which is basically what you do. You dance in a circle. What a great physical manifestation of eternity. Someone asked me to dress the Torah after, but I couldn't do it, owing to the fact that I haven't become officially Jewish yet. But I said I'd be happy to do it once I do have my Beit Din.

Meanwhile, that does not seem to have prevented me in any way from enjoying the Simchat Torah. And I'm happy about that.