Simchat Torah evening

[magid]

I went to the Tremont St. shul Simchat Torah night; I just love that the street gets closed off for something Jewish. It was mobbed, as usual. The first two hakafot stayed inside, then the rest of them moved outside, though each hakafah went inside to circle the sanctuary.

Since the shul is the last of a number of small shuls that used to be in Cambridge, there are a lot of sifrei Torah, eleven of them, ranging from mini to rather heavy.

The evening's hakafot were for

1. Cohanim, bnei cohanim, and people named Cohen
   
2. Levi'im, bnei levi'im, and people who like washing other people's feet
   
3. People who were members of the shul who [too noisy to hear, but there was laughter]
   
4. People who got engaged or married in the last year
   
5. People who finished an advanced degree in the last year
   
6. Students at universities south of the Charles (BU, BC, University of Texas, University of Buenos Aires...)
   
7. Students at universities north of the Charles (Harvard, MIT, Brandeis...)

It doesn't cover everyone, but there were too many people (different story in the morning...). There was plenty of opportunity to take a Torah during dancing, though.

There were a lot more people I knew than I expected, some of them not the people I would've predicted. Yay! *waves*

Before going outside, there was an announcement that there should be at least one sefer Torah for a men's circle and for a women's circle. Interestingly, at the beginning there was a men's circle, but that faded. The women's circle wavered in size, but mostly stayed throughout (frequently with two sifrei Torah; whoever gave us the heaviest one, though....), which was nice. At least once a well-intentioned young man had to be told it was the women's circle; I'm glad someone else did that.

The down side to having so many people in so many different dancing circles outside was that there wasn't song coordination between groups. Yes, each one was joyous and enthusiastic, but the sound of that many people singing one song would've been great.

The neighbors sit out on their porches and watch. I wonder what they think. Ditto for the cop directing traffic away from that block.

Catching up piecemeal...
And LJ's posting page is still horrible, at least on my home machine. Ugh.

Comments

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

3. People who were members of the shul who [too noisy to hear, but there was laughter]

... who are up-to-date on their dues for this year. (Or something to that effect. :-)

It was great to see you there!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ah, the schick gelt in more comedic form...

Good to see you, too.