I hate to be a "party pooper,*" but . . .

Last night, I went to a Chanukah party at Ansche Chesed because Alicia Svigals and her band were accompanying Steve Weintraub, of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, who was teaching and/or leading "easy-to-follow Yiddish dances." Believe it or not, I was there mostly to hear Alicia Svigals and her band, because I don't really enjoy "freilach dancing."

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Some of my readers may be scratching their heads, at this point. “But you’re a dancer!”

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That’s just the point—freilachs are for non-dancers. After five minutes of holding hands and walking around in a circle, with the occasional kick, and maybe a grapevine/”Mayim” step or two, I’m bored out of my mind.

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I confess, though, to being a bit puzzled by the impression I got that the partner dances that Steve Weintraub taught and led were traditional Ashkenazi dances. Here’s some background (copied from this website):

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“According to Vizonsky, the sher is a Jewish adaptation of the quadrille dances being done in the English and French courts of the 18th century. Dvora Lapson states that the dance was originally a tailor's guild dance with the figures meant to represent a pair of shears and threading the needle. In the movie "Dancing into Marriage" it is stated that the dance might also refer to the cutting of the bride's hair with the shears on the evening before the wedding as was customary.

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Beregovski states that the sher originally was a woman's dance since men and women did not usually dance together (see further discussion below). . .”

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After giving instructions for the dance, the writer presents us with this description of an alternative version:

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“This formation was used to avoid handholding between men and women who were not married, assuming all 4 couples were married couples. Instead of having men exchange places as described above, this version of the dance had a man exchanging places with a woman; the turn was then done with 2 men dancing together and 2 women dancing together. The man and woman would then return to their own partner. Discussions on the Jewish Music List (September 13 & 14, 1999) indicate that even this formation would not have been acceptable to traditional rabbis and is probably a modern development (over the last 100 years) due to a more liberalized society. However, the article by Zvi Friedhaber listed on the resource page suggests there were people who broke the rules all along. At the present time separate dancing is still the rule at orthodox celebrations”

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It would appear, then, that shmirat n’giah (the practice of refraining from any physical contact with persons of the opposite gender other than one’s spouse and close relatives) was not necessarily universally observed in the Olde Country.

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Personally, I think that shmirat n'giah has its advantages.

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*Party pooper