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.