Moments: Fifteen Thousand Souls

The girl’s bow swayed against the concert lights. The congregation moved with the music, celebrating. Praying.

“They say music is the pen of the soul,” the woman sitting in front tells me. “Because, words…they…”

She’s trying to find the right words.

“Words limit it…” her daughter, Chana, cuts in, as the man on the screen continues his humming with the instrumental music in the background and the congregation crowd responding together.

Chana, a dorm counsellor at a local school here in Crown Heights, is sitting next to me at the concert that marks the last celebration of Hakhel.

“Hakhel means to come together,” she explains to me later, as we watch scores of men in dark suits and hats with beards dancing in circles. There’s almost a drunken consistency to it: their arms around the next person, they move in a circle, one foot stomping inside the circle, followed by a step to the side.

Hakhel is observed in the Jewish community every seven years to mark the practice of Shemitah (sabbatical). It dates back some 2,000 years, when, for one year in seven, everything would come to a standstill as farmers and workers abandoned their work to study, placing their spiritual needs above their physical needs.

Now, 2,000 years later, observant Jews — about 15,000 of them as Chana tells me — join to celebrate with music and prayers. Today, four days before the Jewish year ends, we’re here, seated in the expanse of three entire avenues in Crown Heights, with thousands of people from the community clapping and singing along — and joining in prayer. Streets have been blocked off in front of the Lubavitcher world headquarters for the celebrations.

I think about what Chana’s mother said earlier. About music. The soul. Fifteen thousand souls together is as magical as it sounds.