Published: 20 April 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
“MIGHT LEAD TO DANCING” is a punchline so well-known that most readers will not require the joke. (If you don’t know it, scroll to the bottom and be aware that it is risqué.)
The humour of this well-loved gag spins on the contrast between traditional Judaism’s enthusiastic attitude towards marital sex and the strictures imposed on the more innocent activity of dancing.
The rabbis were not wrong. Dance can be a highly sensory activity able to serve spiritual ecstasy and earthly passions equally effectively.
But the joke is funny partly because it ignores the many layers of meaning dancing serves in Jewish culture, both traditional and contemporary.
Having just joined dancers from around the world for (parts of) a 24-hour session of continuous Israeli dancing via video conferencing, I can attest that dancing is a key form of cultural attachment for many people – an essential community experience deeply missed under coronavirus isolation.
The Hebrew language has at least six words for dancing: a sign that, like Eskimos and snow, the culture recognises nuances.
Textual sources use dancing as a synecdoche for celebration, and sometimes even as a kind of prayer. In Torah Miriam leads the women to dance with timbrels around the water source and the Talmud reports that pious men danced with lit torches during Sukkot. Dancing is all but compulsory at simchas and forbidden during mourning – just as Torah study is forbidden because it is an activity that signals joyfulness.
I suspect it was the influence of European Christianity, rather than an originally Jewish sentiment that got the rabbis so uncomfortable with dancing. Christian sources equate dancing with lust and the Puritans saw it as a straight path to fornication. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the girls’ dancing is evidence that they have been tainted by witchcraft.
As a result, European culture excluded dance from the forms of support other art forms received. There was no church patronage or academies as there were for music and visual art.
Dance was further marginalised by being classing it as a feminine pursuit, an attitude that continues in some quarters.
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The stage show Billy Elliot, which was playing in Melbourne before the theatres closed, tells the story of a young boy in an English mining town who fights for acceptance as a ballet dancer. The film Billy Elliot, a film released in 2000 is credited with inspiring a dance revolution, giving boys the social permission to dance. Boys’ ballet and jazz classes are now more common – but in countries like Australia it’s still not uncommon for a boy in dance tights to find himself alone in a sea of pink tutus.
The politics of dance is quite different in the Jewish world. Jews dance with enthusiasm – sometimes gender segregated and sometimes not – and dance is every bit as acceptable for men as for women.
In frum circles, men are the most exuberant dancers, the dance circle providing a rare physical outlet in a cerebral culture. Bar mitzvah boys and bridegrooms are tossed about, and young men spin themselves into a frenzy on Simchat Torah. Women dance too, but their circles are rarely as rambunctious.
At the other end of the ideology scale, the secular kibbutz movement spawned a whole new genre of dancing. Rikudai Um, the dancing of the people, was more cultural creed than the patterned folk dancing of Europe. The new Sabra – male or female – was supposed to have their feet in farm boots all day but enough energy to dance a debka when the work was done.
As a result, Israel has given the world some of the leading contemporary dance companies, including the Batsheva Dance Company and the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company.
But the impact of Israeli dance is most powerfully felt away from stages, in scout halls and community centres where the hora is the centre of vibrant Jewish community.
Israel has given the world some of the leading contemporary dance companies. But the impact is most powerfully felt away from stages, in scout halls and community centres where the hora is the centre of vibrant Jewish community
In contemporary Diaspora culture, Israeli dance has been embraced as a key form of cultural attachment. There hundreds of classes around the world, camps from Argentina to Hong Kong and massive annual festivals like Karmiel, which draws 10,000 participants annually.
There are non-Jewish participants too, but they are a small minority. Israeli dance is largely a communal activity, imbued with Hebrew language, the festival calendar, and social connections. In Melbourne there are five clubs: like synagogues they split off and spawn new progeny at regular intervals, usually as the result of a broygus…and let’s be honest, that’s a Jewish behaviour too. There are also classes in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Gosford and Darwin.
In the current, coronavirus incarnation, many of these classes are being run remotely – doing without them is just too difficult for many dedicated dancers. The 24-hour danceathon, organised from Chicago during Chol Hamoed Pesach, was led by teachers in Australia, Brazil, Chile, France, Israel, Switzerland, the UK and the US and joined by many hundreds of dancers whose rolling chat reflected shared knowledge and pleasures. The danceathon raised money for charities, many of them coronavirus-related.
Israeli dance classes are dominated by middle-aged women but almost all the leading choreographers who are the stars of the movement are men –often young enough to be the sons of the dancers. Certainly, in Israel, no boy needs to go through a Billy Elliot experience to become a dancer.
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The power of dance of one of the many facets of life that culture got right generations before science confirmed it. In recent years, the evidence has backed up the Jewish approval of dance. There is clear scientific evidence that it reduces the risk of developing dementia and improves the prognosis for people already experiencing Alzheimer’s disease.
Even the Orthodox rabbinate has come to recognise the health effects of dancing and to give permission for Orthodox dancers to resume dancing after the initial 30-day mourning period – rather than waiting out the entire year because dancing is so essential to physical and mental health. What’s more, it’s cheaper than therapy.
In more secular circles, Israeli dancing may be the only link with Hebrew language, festival celebration and a sense of Jewish community.
Whatever leads to dancing, we need more of it.
That joke:
A young bridegroom goes to see the rabbi in preparation for his wedding. “I have a question about the wedding and a question about the wedding night,” he said. “Regarding the wedding, is it correct that we are not allowed mixed dancing?”
“Absolutely correct,” said the rabbi. “Mixed dancing is immodest and forbidden.”
“Understood,” said the bridegroom. “Now about the wedding night, what positions are allowed in the bedroom?”
“Whatever you like,” answered the rabbi.
“Really?” asked the bridegroom. “Her on top?”
“No problem,” said the rabbi.
“Me on top?”
“Sure.”
“Doggie style?”
“If you like.”
“Standing up?”
“Oy, no,” said the rabbi, suddenly.
“No? Why not?” asked the surprised bridegroom.
“Might lead to dancing.”
Photo: RikudOz Israeli dancing in 24-hour online dance marathon last week (screen capture)
