Hasidic Dances

In early March 1939, Glushchenko, a junior lieutenant of state security and head of a section in the 2nd Department of the State Security Directorate of the NKVD Administration for Vinnytsia Oblast, was reviewing materials concerning a certain Yankel Paperny. This elderly Jew, who had arrived in Vinnytsia in 1933 from the shtetl of Volochysk, quickly became popular among local religious Jews.

Paperny, who had declared himself a tzaddik — the spiritual leader of a Hasidic community — was accused of maintaining an illegal yeshiva, indoctrinating Jewish youth in an anti-Soviet spirit, having links with bourgeois-nationalist organisations abroad, and sending them slanderous information about conditions in the USSR.

After the oblast prosecutor authorised Paperny’s arrest and detention, he was placed in the local prison while the investigation was conducted. Among the testimonies given against him, one of the most remarkable was that of Aba Ofshtein, a resident of Volochysk who knew Yankel Paperny well. Ofshtein reported not only that Paperny had maintained a cheder in Volochysk and illegally sent pupils to Poland to obtain religious articles, but also gave a vivid description of the prayer gatherings he held.

“When arranging prayers, Yankel performed the following religious rite: he placed three benches one on top of another, and danced at the very top with a Bible in his hands,” Aba Ofshtein wrote, describing these extraordinary services. According to the witness, while dancing boldly on the top bench, Yankel shouted to the Jews gathered below: “If I fall, catch the Bible, because it must not touch the floor!”

What was this strange rite that the witness described to the NKVD operative? On the pages of the interrogation record, we are most likely seeing nothing other than a description of a Hasidic dance. Dancing with the “Bible” — probably meaning a Torah scroll — in one’s hands is a typical element of Hasidic celebrations. The elevation on which Reb Yankel danced evidently symbolised the striving to come closer to the Divine. Paperny’s call to those gathered below, meanwhile, emphasised the collective character of the ritual, an important feature of the Hasidic community.

From the very emergence of Hasidism, dance was regarded as a form of prayer and devotion to God. Although some scholars connect the value attached to dance with the central role of joy in Hasidic teaching, different genres of Hasidic literature present a more varied picture. The most important feature of dance is considered to be its theurgical aspect, which sees dance — and especially the mystical actions performed by tzaddikim while dancing — as exerting influence on the heavenly worlds.

This aspect, rooted in Kabbalah, appears in the works of both early and later Hasidic leaders — Yaakov Yosef of Polonne, Dov Ber of Mezeritch, and Nachman of Breslov — and is retold in Hasidic stories.

You can find details of the arrest of Yankel Paperny and other Hasidim from Vinnytsia, as well as descriptions of the life and religious practices of their community, on our website.

Freddy Rotman