When in Darkness, the Rabbi Dances

On the night of October 7, I was praying with the Chabad rabbi.  After the jumbled, mumbled, tear-drenched prayers, he invited us to dance.

Dance? At a moment of collapse and despair? I was paralyzed from head to toe and he was dancing up and down the synagogue aisles into the social hall and back. 

While looking skywards to the God he believes in, the rabbi kept moving and shaking and twisting his thin-boned body like a snake trying to get out of a tunnel. 

His 20 year old son is an IDF soldier stationed in the North. So when the rabbi danced and we encircle him with song, his heart ballooned with love for his son, for his people, for his God.

Whenever sorrow, pain and fear arrives, he dances, he prays, he sings and he loves more.