This year I head the most
passionate Torah Reading
I was on the Bima on Yom Kippur waiting
for the 6th Aliya and not paying to much attention, probably day
dreaming about something or another when the 5th Torah reader
started reading.
I was not looking at him and not
thinking much about it. I expected him to be like all other readers. It was within seconds of him starting to read the
Torah I realized this was going to be one of those experiences and moments. I
looked over and saw this young man, I would guess in his middle 20’s make a torah reading come alive in a way I
have never heard before. He brought the heavens down to earth with this.
As I looked over I could not help
but notice his feet were placed with the right foot in front of the left and
slightly right of it by about shoulders length, like the way a boxer in a prize
fight would stand or float in a ring. You saw him rocking from his right foot
to the left, ever to slightly lifting his heal and putting pressure on the front
of the foot, rocking one and then another, to the beat of his own voice and
then back and fourth again.
His head was cocked to the left
every so slightly, with his shoulders rising at high notes. His entire body moved
with his shoulders curled forward and his entire physical moved with each word.
The words came out in a sweet soprano like chant or song; it was more than a
reading. Signing, reading or what ever
you call it, I could tell he felt it from within and you I knew this was
something I have never seen. Each syllable of every word was delivered with a
passion, love and pureness I had never seen before. The entire time he was
bobbing and weaving to the sounds, with each breath and letter he put his being
into.
He delivered it in way where it
was raw, emotional and passionate all from within him.
Keeping it all but giving it to
everyone in the room at the same time, every word came from deep within, with
his whole body singing it out.
As the words came out I got the
feeling he could not wait to get them out, but at the same time not wanting to
let them go, holding on to them for as long as he could. Looking down at the Torah, all while looking
to the heavens with his delivery.
It was not his singing or
chanting that made this amazing, I have heard many beautiful voices who deliver
it with excellence, but with him this was so much more. It was he put every
ounce of his physical and spiritual being into in the delivery with such
emotion and passion. I saw him read it
not for him or the others in the room but he was reading it for G-d.
October 5, 2014
H. Jack Miller
