Rebbetzin Chana’s Memoirs: The Very Stones Danced

In this 12th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chana describes how she and her husband Reb Levik “celebrated” Sukkos and Simchas Torah in their far-away exile in Kazakhstan.

The very stones were dancing

Sukkot [5703 (1942)]: For a sukkah, we paid to build an ante-room to our room—ostensibly for the purpose of preventing cold winter air from blowing straight through our door. When our landlady demanded that we finish the room with a roof, we told her that presently we couldn’t afford it but would do so before the onset of the winter cold.

Simchat Torah: We didn’t yet have a Torah in our possession. Our guest who ate his Yom Tov meals with us had found work as a night-watchman and had to spend his nights in the fields guarding the produce, so now he could come only during the day. Thus, only I was present with my husband in our room at night.

The time of hakafot arrived. It is most difficult for an ordinary person like me to describe my husband’s emotional experience, as was evident on his face. He started reciting the customary verses preceding the actual hakafot—Ata horeta ladaat ki Hashem Hu haElokim, ein od mil’vado —using the same tune he used back at home [in Dnepropetrovsk], when he celebrated hakafot in shul together with many hundreds of Jews. The following night, he used to celebrate hakafot in our home with several dozen of those close to him. Whether at shul or at our home, it was not just [his] dancing— it seemed like the very paving stones danced along to his joy.

Here, too, he enveloped himself with such joy. He recited every verse, and after every circuit he sang and danced, alone, to the melody known in our hometown as “the Rav’s melody.” Hecircled around in the narrow space in our room between his bed and the table, reciting the verses of the hakafot: “…Pure and upright One, please save us… Benevolent One and bestower of goodness, answer us on the day we call.” He wanted this to be pure joy, and his deep emotion was manifest in the words he recited: “He who knows thoughts, please save us… He who is garbed in righteousness, answer us on the day we call.”

This was a most difficult experience for me to endure. Sitting on a wooden stool in the corner, I observed the immensity and intensity of my husband’s love of the Torah as he danced away all the seven hakafot.

Following hakafot on Simchat Torah morning, he recited Sissu v’simchu b’simchat Torah [“Rejoice and exult in the joy of the Torah…”] with similar enthusiasm.

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