I Hope You Dance – Shabbat Shuvah (Ha’azinu)

Written by Rabbi Eleanor Davis — 23 September 2023

An old country song has been trending again this year thanks to a Netflix series (Love is Blind).  It’s become a popular wedding song, with lyrics that are effectively a parent’s blessing for their child: “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder, / You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger, / … Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens, / … And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance. … I hope you dance.”  This isn’t quite a hope to see you on Strictly [BBC TV series Strictly Come Dancing], though that’s always a possibility; it’s a hope that you will seize chances that come your way, especially chances to embrace the joys of life.

Today is an especially appropriate day to consider dancing: not because Strictly begins this evening, but because our commentators find a link in Parashat Ha’azinu with dancing, in these final chapters of Moses’ farewell speeches to the Israelites. Among the rebukes that Moses makes of the Israelites is that “צ֥וּר יְלָדְךָ֖ תֶּ֑שִׁי וַתִּשְׁכַּ֖ח אֵ֥ל מְחֹלְלֶֽךָ׃   You neglected the Rock who begot you, Forgot the God who labored to bring you forth” (Deuteronomy 32:18). The thirteenth-century commentator Chizkuni connects this מְחֹלְלֶֽךָ not with bringing forth in the sense of giving birth, but rather with the verb chul, chet-vav-lamed – the verb meaning ‘to dance.’  Chizkuni interprets וַתִּשְׁכַּ֖ח אֵ֥ל מְחֹלְלֶֽךָ to mean “you forgot the God who danced you forth from Egypt,” connecting it with when the Israelites left slavery in Egypt forty years earlier, when Miriam led the women in dance with timbrels in joy and gratitude for having crossed the sea to safety.  Despite the suffering that came before it, for future generations to forget this joy is an act of deep ingratitude.

Dancing also features in a midrashic part of the Mishnah (Ta’anit 4:8) that we often read during the summer.  It says that on Tu B’Av, shortly after the fast day of Tisha B’Av, “בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלַיִם יוֹצְאוֹת בִּכְלֵי לָבָן … The young unmarried women of Jerusalem would dress in white and go out… וְחוֹלוֹת בַּכְּרָמִים and they would dance in the vineyards,” where the young men would choose wives from among them.  We use it to explain this day of matchmaking, Tu B’Av, but too often we overlook the very beginning of this Mishnah.  It opens with Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s statement: “There were no days as joyous for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur, שֶׁבָּהֶן בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלַיִם יוֹצְאוֹת as on them – those days, plural – the daughters of Jerusalem would go out…”  This vineyard ceilidh is apparently something that happened on Tu B’Av and on Yom Kippur.   We now know Yom Kippur as a serious fast day on which to seek atonement for our failings – so what makes this a suitable day for those young women to go out dancing and find love?

When the Rabbis of the Talmud (Bava Batra 121a) address this question, to them the answer seems so simple and obvious that they explain Yom Kippur in a single sentence.  The joyful quality of Yom Kippur comes from it being a day of pardon and forgiveness, because it is the day when the second set of tablets were given, after Moses smashed the first set in anger at the Israelites’ worship of the Golden Calf.  When Moses manages to calm God’s anger at this betrayal, the physical symbol of God’s forgiveness is the second set of Tablets.

The Rabbis of our starting Mishnah associate those tablets with King Solomon on his wedding day: a gift confirming a covenantal promise, just like a wedding ring; which is surprisingly appropriate.  Jewish tradition treats a wedding day as a personal Yom Kippur: brides and grooms traditionally recite the Ashamnu and Al Chet confessions on the day of their wedding and fast until after the ceremony.  This isn’t meant to be punishment or penance, or to make the wedding day a time of misery: these practices help the couple prepare themselves for the joy of a fresh start as they embark on a new phase of life together.

The Rabbis seem to suggest that we can make the comparison in the opposite direction too: that Yom Kippur can be like a wedding day.  Like a wedding, it is a serious undertaking, making a lasting commitment and requiring the challenge of honestly facing the selves that we bring to these relationships, not least to see where work will be needed; there may also be moments of sadness, especially as we remember beloved people who are no longer here to share this day with us.  Underlying all the prayers and practices to focus our minds, however, are a sense of hope and joy at the promise that a new start is possible, whatever the road that has brought us to this moment.  This is what enables the Rabbis to say that “There were no days as joyous for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur.”  This is a day of possibility, when God waits with open arms to partner us when we make teshuvah: we have only to face the music, and then we can dance.

Sometimes it feels like our relationship with God, even with Judaism, is beyond repair, whether specific misdeeds are causing us pain or we simply feel estranged.  Yet our Rabbis approached this season of teshuvah with confidence that the God who danced us out of slavery is just waiting for us to renew our relationship:  if you could do the same, how might your experience of Yom Kippur change?  Maybe next year Alyth will schedule a Yom Kippur singles event on the heath – but until then, may we each remember the words of the song: “When you get the choice to sit it out or dance,/ I hope you dance…”