Dancing with the Story

Sitting at the chevra Torah table this past Saturday morning, when we got to the end of the final verse, the one that reads: Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord singled out, face to face, for the various signs and portents that the Lord sent him to display...and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel - I'll admit it. I got choked up. Being at the end made me really feel as if I had accomplished something, in partnership with my study group. And at the same time, I was suddenly scared of being at the beginning, all over again.

V'zot Ha-Brachah - And this is the blessing - is the name of Torah's final parsha. In it, Moses and the Holy One survey the land in an echo of G-d's creation - the very moment we are returning to tonight, almost simultaneously - so that when we end the Torah and begin it again, we read without end, without interruption the final words - l'einei kol Yisrael - before the eyes of all Israel - and the first: bereshit - in the beginning.

So that leaves me asking the question: what is the blessing? Is the blessing that we are at the end, that Moses has become holier and more esteemed in death than when he was alive and working wonders, that the questions are past us and that we have to live with the answers we came up with this year? Or is the blessing that we're at the beginning again, with the questions still in front of us, and the answers still waiting for us to find them?

This question and tension comes at an interesting moment; this morning, I was suddenly motivated to start working again on this four-hundred page love letter of a novel that I've been messing around with in my head for almost two years: a book called Not for Profit, which details some of the ridiculous actions and incomprehensible personal ethics of people in the business of doing good. I've got an outline, and a couple of chapters written, but for me, the part of the story I am most passionate about is the last two thirds. The question is, do I scroll this baby out and write from the end to the beginning? Or do I do what I did with Bookseller's, and write it beginning to end?

Jewish text, in this case, isn't really helping me answer the question. The discussion in my head is more Talmudic than anything else. "If you write from the end," one idea tells me, "you can back into the story. You know how it ends this time. Remember: you didn't know last time. Wasn't that the problem?"

Still another point of view tells me to do what I've done in the past, that it's a successful method for me, that it is practical and methodical and normal to use a timeline and follow it so that by definition, its rigidity will give me a structure in which I can be more creative. But the timeline also has its cost: my last book suffered from being too literal in a lot of places. And I'm afraid of getting bogged down in bones of the story. Especially because, as many of you know, the story itself is so delicious.

In the same vein, and much in the same emotional context, I'm nervous about attending Simchat Torah services tonight. I'm not much of a dancer, and dancing with the scroll always makes me afraid that I'm going to drop it or trip over my own feet or do something stupid. Put me up on the bimah and ask me to sing, or set me down in front of a computer and tell me to write a poem, and I'm your girl. But ask me to dance or skip or paddle or skate, and it's almost as if I've been asked to fly. I tell myself that I am no good at any of it in an effort to figure out whether I'm healthy enough to try. And I don't know the answer. Do I dance because in my heart I know I will be okay, or do I start slowly - at the beginning - and try not to be afraid to ask for help if I need it?

And again, here I am, afraid of getting bogged down in the logistics of the dance, when what I should really be focusing on is the joy.

Especially because the story itself is so delicious.