Simchas Torah is really a yeshiva festival. Simchas Torah in my first Litvak yeshiva in New York was an experience enough to last a lifetime.
The basic idea is that when you spend the whole year trying your best to learn and keep the Oral and Written Law, then when Simchas Torah comes along, it is a deep experience inside you. The dancing is simply an outflow of an internal source of holiness. It comes from the inner self.
What you generally see on Simchas Torah is on the other hand mainly a farce. It is making a show of dancing trying to show joy that is not internal.
My recommendation is not to go to any synagogue on Simchas Torah. Either stay home, or find an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. Either find the real thing, or nothing. But don't go for fake joy.
The ingredients of an authentic yeshiva are simple but not sufficient. You need a kind of spirit of Torah to make it work..
The basic idea is that when you spend the whole year trying your best to learn and keep the Oral and Written Law, then when Simchas Torah comes along, it is a deep experience inside you. The dancing is simply an outflow of an internal source of holiness. It comes from the inner self.
What you generally see on Simchas Torah is on the other hand mainly a farce. It is making a show of dancing trying to show joy that is not internal.
My recommendation is not to go to any synagogue on Simchas Torah. Either stay home, or find an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva. Either find the real thing, or nothing. But don't go for fake joy.
The ingredients of an authentic yeshiva are simple but not sufficient. You need a kind of spirit of Torah to make it work..
