The dancing began Monday at sundown. By 10:30 p.m., about 100 people had gathered. By 2 a.m., nearly 500 had stopped by.

They danced in the streets, from the traffic circle by Denton Hall all the way to Hopkins Avenue by Knox Towers. They danced in circles and chanted Hebrew songs that celebrated the end and the beginning – of reading the Torah, that is.

“It’s not a High Holiday service, it’s not a Passover meal,” Rabbi Eli Backman said. “It’s a fun, exciting, out-of-the-box type of experience that makes them proud and helps them connect to who they are.”

Simchat Torah is the final Jewish celebration of the fall season and marks the end of another year-long reading cycle of the Jewish holy scripture. Members of the Jewish faith read a section of the Torah each week of the year, and this two-day holiday commemorates the conclusion of the final section.

In Hebrew, “Simcha” means “joy” – a word that many Jewish students said fully captures the essence of these festivities.

“This is just the pure ecstasy, this one,” senior linguistics and hearing and speech sciences major Ilanna Newman said.

Students from all over participated in this university’s celebration, including the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Yeshiva University in New York City and even as far as Israel. Male and female students split into separate circles and danced at different locations across the campus, picking up groups of people along the way.

Police blocked traffic outside of Denton Hall where the dancing began, and people clapped and chanted as they walked through the streets. At the front of the pack, one person held a $30,000 Torah, which was covered with a garbage bag to protect it from the rain.

Jews and non-Jews alike joined in the dance, and many who have celebrated Simchat Torah from year to year brought their own memories surrounding the holiday.

“My synagogue has a tradition … on Simchat Torah, the Torah is in scrolls so they unroll the entire thing around the main sanctuary and they see how many times it wraps around,” senior English major Abby Stouber said.

“It’s not your regular synagogue event,” Backman said. “Whether you’re ‘the most religious kid on campus’ or not completely involved yet in anything on campus, you still can dance.”

Yesterday at dusk, the festivities came to an end and participants rolled the scroll back to the beginning to start all over again.