I once read a moving story about the power of a piece of string. A woman was incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto together with her elderly father. She did everything in her power to tend to his needs, scouring the streets for extra food and risking her own life in the process. Despite all her efforts, however, she tragically watched her father slowly decline, unable to halt the inevitable.
Yet there was one thing she felt she could do to make a difference. Every night she would tie a string around her father’s wrist. Then, she would take the end of that string and tie it around her own wrist. As she slept on the floor by his bed, his every move would make her move as well and she would immediately wake up and care for him.
Her father died in the ghetto. But her sense that they were connected carried her through the war and accompanied her to the very last days of her own life.
That piece of string was likely to have been just a few short lengths of fragile thread twisted together. It disappeared along with the lives of so many.
But the link that was forged between them transcended all boundaries of time and space.
Over the High Holydays this year, I have reflected on the message of that piece of string. For many, this Rosh Hashanah was a return to shul for the first time in 18 months. Yet the return to shul marked so much more than just a re-entry into familiar surroundings. It constituted the weaving of a new connection, a virtual piece of string, linking every person present in a grand circle, a joint embrace of Jewish faith and tradition.
Standing together in shul made me realise just how close we are to each other and how much we need each other in order to experience the vibrancy and joy of Judaism in full technicolour. That virtual piece of string links us all. When we move, so does the person next to us. When we feel uplifted, we realise that we have the power to uplift someone else.
And the gift of doing so is nothing short of priceless.
Another casualty of the pandemic was the absence of traditional simcha dancing. Of course, many people still aren’t ready to resume dancing at simchas. There are few activities less conducive to social distancing than interlocking arms with complete strangers in a sweaty circle. But witnessing simcha dancing begin to restart is like seeing communal Jewish tradition come back to life.
The ultimate symbolism of the circle dance is of course the same as the virtual piece of string that links us in shul. The beauty of a circle is the very fact that there are no superior points to it. We join together as one people, united in celebration of a special couple. Just as in shul, on the High Holy Days, we stand together as one, united by and through our eternal faith.
The pinnacle of these special weeks in the Jewish calendar is Simchat Torah, the Festival of the Rejoicing of the Law. There is, perhaps, no more powerful visual imagery in the festival cycle than that of Jews joining hands to dance in a circle around the Torah on Simchat Torah.
To show unbridled joy over the scroll that defines our people is to give expression to the very core of our Jewish identity.
The German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine once famously referred to the torah as the “portable homeland of the Jewish people”. And when we dance around it, we simultaneously declare that wherever life takes us, we will always somehow find ourselves revolving around that scroll, allowing it to guide us in life.
Perhaps, then, this is the real key to the trajectory of the High Holydays. The virtual strings of tradition we create on Rosh Hashanah, linking us to those around us, eventually find their ultimate expression in the actual circles around the torah on Simchat Torah. There is no greater joy than uniting with others around a shared simcha.
And when that simcha is the focal point of our shared heritage, the dance is powerful enough to transform virtual strings into actual ones, leading us to link arms in a dance that transcends the challenges of the moment and helps us face the fears of tomorrow.
This High Holy Days, we have once again joyfully begun to re-embrace our shared heritage, as a community. And this Simchat Torah we will begin again the endless circle dance of our people, celebrating the precious gift that makes us who we are.
Rabbi Dr Yoni Birnbaum is rabbi of Kehillas Toras Chaim synagogue in Hendon, London
