5 min read

Shimon Juggled Eight Torches at the Water Drawing

On Sukkot nights Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel spun eight torches without a clash, then bowed on two thumbs until his lips met Temple stone.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Court That Refused Shadow
  2. Thumbs on Stone
  3. The Rooster and the Turn West
  4. What the Night Cost and Gave

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel stepped into the Court of the Women with eight torches already lit. Oil spat. Sparks climbed the night air. Crowds pressed the balconies and the lower courts until breath itself seemed crowded. The Levites had begun on the fifteen steps, harps and lyres and cymbals under a ceiling of sound so thick no corner of Jerusalem kept its private dark.

Shimon Juggled Eight Torches at the Water Drawing Click for full size

He did not wait for a hush. He threw the first torch high, then the second, then the third, until eight arcs of fire cut the space above his hands. Flame rose. Flame fell. No torch kissed its neighbor. No wick died in the catch. He moved as if joy had a craft and he alone still remembered the pattern.

The Court That Refused Shadow

Four golden lamp-stands stood in the court, each crowned with four bowls. Young priests climbed ladders with cruses of oil, one hundred and twenty log in each vessel, and fed wicks woven from worn drawers and girdles of the priesthood itself. When those lamps took, courtyards across the city answered. Roofs caught the glow. Alleys lost their night. A man far from the Temple could read a face by the light of the water-drawing feast alone.

Holy men and men of rank danced with torches of their own. They shouted praises between the songs. The Levites held the steps from the Court of Israel down to the women, instruments without number, voices stacked on voices. This was Simchat Beit HaShoevah, the Rejoicing of the House of the Water Drawing, the nights of Sukkot (the autumn harvest festival of booths) when the city learned that worship could sweat and laugh and still be holy.

Shimon kept the eight in motion. Heat brushed his sleeves. Oil smoked. A child on a shoulder pointed and lost the words. The fire never tangled.

Thumbs on Stone

When the dancing thinned for a breath, he stopped the torches and set them aside. Then he bowed. Not a nod. Not a polite fold at the waist. He lowered his whole body on two thumbs, flesh against stone, until his lips touched the floor of the court. The psalm lived in the act: servants taking pleasure in her stones (Psalms 102:15). He rose on those same thumbs without help from knee or palm. Dust clung to his mouth. He wiped it once and did not apologize for the dirt of devotion.

Other sages watched. None matched the prostration. The dry note that later clung to the night said only that this was what stooping properly meant. In the court, under living light, the line was not a joke. It was the measure of a body that had given everything it owned to joy before God.

Trumpets cut the air from the upper gate. Two priests held silver instruments and waited for the signal that would end the night's dance and open the water's road.

The Rooster and the Turn West

At the first crow they blew one long blast, one broken blast, one long blast. The procession moved east with trumpets at every few steps. When the company reached the East Gate, faces turned back toward the Temple, west, against the habit of an older error.

"Our fathers who stood in this place turned their backs to the Temple and their faces to the east, to the rising sun," the voices said. "But we, our eyes are toward God."

Rabbi Yehudah held that they doubled the claim until it rang: for God, and unto God the eyes. The lamps still burned behind them. The city still glowed. The procession that had spent the night in fire now claimed a direction for the morning water, a refusal of the star that had once stolen the gaze.

Shimon walked among them with soot on his hands and the memory of eight orbits still in the muscles of his arms. The water would be drawn. The libation would rise. The feast would keep its name because joy had not been treated as a lesser offering.

What the Night Cost and Gave

By the time gray light thinned the lamp-glow, throats were raw and sandals were dark with oil and dust. A priest on a ladder lowered an empty cruse. A Levite set a harp against a step and flexed fingers that no longer felt separate from the strings. Somewhere a courtyard that had never been this bright cooled toward ordinary day.

Shimon's thumbs still carried the press of stone. His palms still knew the weight of torches caught at the last instant before a fall. No decree had forced the juggling. No enemy had been driven back by the bow. The night had asked for more than correct sacrifice. It had asked for a sage willing to look foolish in firelight so that pleasure in the stones would not stay a verse on a page.

Jerusalem held the afterimage: a city without a dark court, an elder under spinning flame, lips on the floor, and a people turning west at dawn to say where their eyes belonged. The water went up. The songs went quiet. The light that had spilled past every wall left a residue in the eyes of anyone who had stood under it and watched a teacher play with fire as if play itself were a form of prayer.

SukkotTempleShimon Ben GamalielJerusalemWater DrawingTorchesSimchat Beit HashoevahSongMoonJoyLevites
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Hebraic Literature (1901), Talmud, Sukkah 53a (Ibid., fol. 53, col. 1)Hebraic Literature (1901)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Project Gutenberg eBook #14368, Hebraic Literature · PD-US-pre-1929

At the most joyful festival in the Jewish year, the Simchat Beit HaShoevah, the Rejoicing of the House of the Water Drawing, held on the nights of Sukkot, the Sages did things you would not expect of grave old men.

It is told of Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel that he would take eight flaming torches, throw them into the air one after another in rapid succession, and catch them all again without letting a single one touch its neighbor. He did this in the Temple courts while the Levites blew trumpets and the crowds surged with joy. And when the dancing paused, he would bow, not an ordinary bow, but the full Temple prostration, supporting his entire body on his two thumbs alone, lowering himself until his lips touched the stone floor, then lifting himself back up.

The Rabbis say this was done in fulfillment of the psalm, For Your servants take pleasure in her stones (Psalms 102:15). No other Sage could match it. The Talmud (Sukkah 53a) notes dryly, "This is what is meant by stooping properly."

The scene, preserved in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, is a window into something we have largely lost. Jewish worship at its height was not solemn the way a funeral is solemn. It was ecstatic, a juggling elder, torches spinning in the firelight, harps and lutes and trumpets, and the whole courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem flooded with enough lamplight that not a dark corner remained.

The joy of the righteous, the Sages insist, looks a lot like play.

Full source
Hebraic Literature (1901), Talmud, Sukkah 51a–52a (Sukkah, fol. 51)Hebraic Literature (1901)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Project Gutenberg eBook #14368, Hebraic Literature · PD-US-pre-1929

During the nights of Sukkot, the Second Temple in Jerusalem lit up like nothing the world had ever seen. In the Court of the Women stood four giant golden lamp-stands, each crowned with four golden bowls. Four ladders reached up to the bowls, and four young priests climbed them with cruses of oil, each cruse holding one hundred and twenty log of oil. The wicks were woven from the worn-out drawers and girdles of the priests themselves.

When the lamps blazed, the Talmud (Sukkah 53a) tells us, there was not a single courtyard in all of Jerusalem that did not glow with the light of the Simchat Beit HaShoevah, the Rejoicing of the House of the Water Drawing. Holy men and men of dignity danced before the crowds with flaming torches in their hands, rehearsing songs and shouting praises. The Levites with harps, lyres, cymbals, trumpets, and instruments without number stood on the fifteen steps leading from the Court of Israel to the Court of the Women. They played. They sang.

At the top of the steps, two priests stood at the upper gate with silver trumpets. As soon as the rooster crowed, they blew one long blast, one broken blast, and one long blast, the signal for the water drawing to begin. Then the whole procession moved east, trumpets sounding every few steps. When they reached the East Gate, they turned their faces west toward the Temple and declared: "Our fathers, who once stood in this place, turned their backs to the Temple and their faces to the east, to worship the rising sun. But we, our eyes are toward God!"

Rabbi Yehudah says they repeated the words, echoing: "We are for God, and unto God are our eyes directed." The scene, preserved in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, captures something Judaism has spent two thousand years trying to remember: joy is a form of worship, and light is a form of prayer. The ancestors had turned their backs to the Presence to chase a star. The Rabbis turned their faces back.

Full source