This month, I attended a conference for Jewish professionals with roughly 1,300 colleagues from across the field. Leading Edge and Jewish Federations of North America brought together the fundraisers and the funders, the senior program experts and the young communications professionals right out of college, and everyone else who goes to work every day for the good of the Jewish people.
We gathered at a large hotel in Baltimore to mingle and schmooze and remember what motivates our work. Overlooking Camden Yards, we experienced a form of hakhel, the mitzvah that calls on us to periodically gather the entire Jewish people.
The most important part of the JPro conference for me was the grief dance party. I don’t think it was called that, officially. On the second night of the conference, as part of a large sprawling BBQ dinner, the organizers had invited a young Israeli DJ named Daniel Vaknin.
Daniel is a survivor of the October 7 Nova massacre. The conference bio told us that Daniel, who “has always been passionate about bringing joy and dance to others,” now “travels the world as a representative of the Tribe of Nova Foundation... providing critical psychological, emotional, social, and welfare support to Nova survivors.”
I really hadn’t planned on joining. The Omer is a time for mourning, not dancing. And I always feel uneasy about the ways that October 7 programming can sometimes blur the boundary between commemoration and entertainment. But the music was magnetic. Intending to head up to my room after a long day of networking and teaching, I happened to walk through the outdoor tent, past the dance floor, and I was drawn in almost involuntarily. The music was too good. Turns out he is an excellent DJ.
So I found myself dancing, eyes closed, letting the music flow over and through me. Here we were, having the same experience as those who had traveled south for the Nova festival, listening to the same Israeli music, maybe even the same song. That moment ended in tragedy, and here we were being joyful. Whether dancing hakafot with the Torah or to the subwoofer of a desert DJ, the massacres of October 7 are forever tied up in dancing.
Holding this heaviness, I looked up at the DJ. He had the biggest smile. Not a forced smile, but a huge, genuine grin that lit up his entire face as he looked out over the crowd of dancers. He was doing what he loved, and shouldn’t he get to do that? After everything he has been through, everything he lost, he deserved the chance to weave this music together for us, to share that smile with us, to bring joy and dance to others.
The music was loud, inescapably loud. This was maybe what I liked most. Like any good dance party, the sound was completely immersive. This, I thought to myself, is the volume at which I hear October 7. This is the right way to grieve, not through a quiet psalm or a whispered personal prayer, but through an oppressively loud beat that I can feel pulse through my entire body.
'Is this appropriate?'
“Is this appropriate?” someone tapped me and mouthed the words so I could understand. Without stopping our dance, he asked, “Is this too much? Too much grieving? Too much joy?” No, I answered, it’s perfect. This is the only way. A grief dance party is the only right way to mourn and keep living, to feel the pain unapologetically and completely, and to give ourselves permission for the release and relief we all so desperately need.
The biblical words collapse – s’fod and r’kod: “A time for wailing and a time for dancing” (Ecclesiastes 3:4) are both now. Dancing together allowed us to be with this DJ in his smile and his pain through the same action, to grieve with him, and to let him bring us joy. This was the ritual we needed.
As the evening drew to a close, our DJ quieted the music and spoke softly into the mic, “I am going to play one more song, and this song is for all the beautiful souls who aren’t with us anymore after Nova.”
I repeated this story of tribute and dedication to someone later that night, reflecting on the power of the evening.
“Wow,” she said, “and did everybody just cry?”
No, I said, we danced.
The writer, a rabbi, is executive vice president of the Hadar Institute.