Torahs on Parade

Dancing in the Streets













Today's peak experience confirmed that you never know what you’re going to run into on the streets of Tel Aviv. I was returning from my afternoon shpatzeer (wanderings) and a delicious dinner of anchovy pizza at the newly opened Pizza/Pasta on Yehuda HaMaccabi. As I walked towards home I was listening to Haruki Murikami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on my Ipod. Suddenly the narrator’s voice was drowned out by a cacophony of sound coming from the side street across the road. I turned my head and saw what looked like carnival lights about half a block down. For some reason, I had the idea this might be a Bar Mitzvah or birthday party, but this seemed unlikely for 7 p.m. on a Wednesday evening. As I got closer I noticed a large crowd surrounding a caravan made up of a truck festooned with multi-colored lights in the shape of crowns, pulling a trailer with more lights, spewing periodic geysers of smoke and giant sparklers and outfitted with a large speaker blasting very lively Jewish music with an eastern flavor. After the truck and trailer came a large canopy under which men of all ages and mode of dress were vigorously dancing while holding aloft multiple Torahs. Pausing every so often along the way, the procession, accompanied by a diverse crowd of men, women, small children in strollers and on shoulders, teenagers, and elders, danced its way onto Herzog, crossed busy Namir onto Yehuda HaMaccabi and turned down the first small side street to reach its final destination---the Sephardic synagogue. Here the music and dancing reached a peak before the Torahs were finally carried into the synagogue. As I learned from a poster on the street, the congregation was welcoming a new Torah that a local family had donated in honor of their parents. Nice welcoming party!