GIFTS: I Wondered If the Gentiles Ever Danced with Their Bible

As Summer gives way to Autumn it is a lovely time of the year. The days are growing shorter and cooler, the brightness of the summer sun is mellowing, there is a nip in the evening air, apples and pears are fast ripening: it is the time of harvest.

As we write, Yom Kippur is just hours away (the Day of Atonement, the most holy day in the Jewish calendar, the one day in the year when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies on behalf of the people of Israel: a clear type of Christ).

The Autumnal Equinox marks the beginning of Fall and reminds us of the many significant things that have happened in Church history at this time of year, like Moroni's annual visits to Joseph and the removing from the Cumorah earth of the gold plates, precious for what they contain and teach, not for their considerable karat value.

This year, October 1st is the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, or of Ingathering, called by the New Testament Jews simply, "the Feast, and reckoned by them to be the greatest and most joyful of all" (see the LDS Bible Dictionary, page 673).

With this as an introduction, we think there is a quiet power in the following extract. See if you agree:--

"I remember the night in the second week of October when we danced with the Torah scrolls in our little synagogue. It was the night of Simchat Torah, the festival that celebrates the completion of the annual cycle of Torah readings. The last portion of the Five Books of Moses would be read the next morning.

"The little synagogue was crowded and tumultuous with joy. I remember the white-bearded Torah reader dancing with one of the heavy scrolls as if he had miraculously shed his years. My father and uncle danced for what seemed to me to be an interminable length of time, circling about one another with their Torah scrolls, advancing upon one another, backing off, singing.

"Saul and Alex and I danced too. I relinquished my Torah to someone in the crowd, then stood around watching and dancing. It grew warm inside the small room and I went through the crowd and out the rear door to the back porch. I stood in the darkness and let the air cool my face.

"I could feel the floor of the porch vibrating to the dancing inside the synagogue. It was a windy fall night, the air clean, the sky vast and filled with stars. The noise of the singing and dancing came clearly through the open window of the synagogue. An old cycle ending; a new cycle beginning. Tomorrow morning Moses would die, and the old man would read the words recounting his death; a few minutes later he would read the first chapter and the beginning three verses of the second chapter of Genesis. Death and birth without separation. Endings leading to beginnings.

"And then, on Shabbat, he would read all of the first portion of the Book of Genesis: the Creation, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel. And the following Shabbat he would read the story of Noah and the Flood. And then Abraham and Sarah and the Covenant and Isaac and the sacrifice and Rebecca and Jacob and Esau and Joseph and . . . .

"The noise inside the synagogue poured out into the night, an undulating, swelling and receding and thinning and growing sound. The joy of dancing with the Torah, holding it close to you, the words of God to Moses at Sinai. I wondered if Gentiles ever danced with their Bible. Hey, Tony. Do you ever dance with your Bible?

"I had actually spoken the question. I heard the words in the cool dark air. I had not thought to do that. I had not even thought of Tony---yes, I remembered his name: Tony Savanola. I had not thought of him in years. Where was he now? Fighting in the war probably. Or studying for the priesthood and deferred from the draft as I was. Hey, Tony. Do you ever read your Bible? Do you ever hold it to you and know how much you love it? Do Christian Bible scholars write about Jesus the same way they write about Abraham? Do they say it's all only stories? Hey, Tony?"

(Chaim Potok, In the Beginning, pp. 382--83, and with thanks to Dean.)