Dancing Arouses and Intensifies Joy

It is a great mitzvah to dance before bride and groom and rouse them to be joyful.1 Thus the Mishnah states:2 “How is one to dance before the bride?” The Gemara says:3 “It was said about R. Yehudah ... that he would dance before the bride.”

Joy and dance are essentially different:

Joy4 is an internal expression of one’s innermost feelings; it does not generally express itself through one’s external bodily organs.

Dance, however, is an external manifestation of the person’s limbs; particularly his feet. Thus, even when one is sad he can still physically perform dance steps,5 that is, he still can “dance.”

However, dancing at a wedding is to be filled and permeated with the fervor and joy of gleefully dancing in honor of bride and groom.

When someone is truly and deeply joyful, his joy will erupt,breaking all boundaries. It will travel from his heart to all his other limbs, and find physical expression through dance. He will then be in a state of “all his limbs declar[ing]”6 his feeling of joy; his joy will even permeate his most external of limbs, his feet.

Moreover, dance is primarily expressed through the feet, and in so doing, the feet will then lift the entire body, including the head and heart. This is also true regarding the inner meaning and significance of dancing: that it intensifies and bolsters one’s joy; for through dance, the feeling of joy increases and swells in one’s mind and heart.

Our Sages have therefore said that one should not be satisfied with mere joy at a wedding. One should also express one’s extreme joythroughdancing and leaping — simultaneously rousing his joy to an even greater level.


Dancing and Leaping When the Joy Is Intense

In the book entitled Derushei Chassunah from the Mitteler Rebbe,7 there is a lengthy exposition about the merit of dance. He explains there that there are two forms of dance: The first is dancing in an orderly fashion and in an exacting manner in time with the melody. One dances in a most precise manner; the movement of his feet corresponding exactly to the song’s rhythm and pace without the slightest variation. The second involves dancing with haphazard movements in a disorderly and disorganized manner, as it is stated with regard to David, that he was “rejoicing before G‑d with all his might,”8 and that “King David leaped and danced.”9

The first type of dance results from joy that is limited and measured, a joy of the mind and heart; the person regulating the movements of his hands and feet in accordance with the melody and his degree of joy.

The second type of dance results from an overwhelming degree of joy. When his joy is so immense that it permeates every fiber of his being — up to and including his very essence — then his mind and heart are incapable of containing this limitless joy and it bursts forth in “leaping and dancing” in a disorderly and disorganized manner, with a variety of movements — dancing that transcends one’s intellect.


Dance Is Connected to a Wedding’s Essence

The tremendous joy of a wedding that finds expression in dance — joy so great that it extends to the very essence of the person — is related to the essential character of a wedding.

As mentioned earlier, a wedding brings about total and absolute unification of bride and groom, not only on an external level, but internally and essentially as well — up to and including the soul, the highest level of all. The joy of a wedding therefore fills man’s entire being, even his very essence. This tremendous joy is expressed, as previously explained, through dancing.

Kabbalah and Chassidus also explain the special quality of dance:10 “Dance is performed in a circle, the level of makkifim, or the encompassing level, the “supernal spheres.” This is similar to a wedding where the unification of husband and wife is not only on an internal and revealed level, but also — and more importantly — on the higher and more encompassing levels of makkifim.11