209. The scroll

(Continued.)

We danced in frenzied, ecstatic circles until I was dizzy. As the music grew louder and faster and we went around for the thousandth time, the woman holding the sefer Torah in the center of our group caught my eye. She held out the scroll to me, and began to remove her tallit.

Sometimes people appear in your lives just when you need them. it was the same woman who, a few years earlier, I sat next to during the very first Shabbat morning service I attended at my synagogue. Back then I thought she was from another planet; now I was the one about to jump through space and time. As we continued to shake and sway and spin, she guided me into the center of the circle, draped the tallit over my shoulders (the custom is never to approach or touch a scroll without wearing one) and gently placed the sefer Torah in my arms.