[This article first appeared in The Jewish Week, a New York publication, in June 2005.]

It’s nearing midnight on a recent Wednesday night at the 92nd Street Y, and the scene at Buttenweiser Hall is a cross between the club sequence in “Saturday Night Fever” and a country dance from the movie rendition of a Jane Austen novel.

The hora, it seems, has gone the way of the frug, even in Israeli folk dancing circles.

Swirling couples glide around the room in concentric circles, but instead of white suits or gowns, jeans and special dance sneakers are the costumes of choice. And because this is Israeli dance, a sense of comfortable chaos prevails: The circles are not entirely circles, the Hebrew music is mixed with the chatter of people talking and singing along, and of the dancers greeting each other with kisses on both cheeks.

On it goes — 20- and 30-somethings looking for love, aging hippies reliving their kibbutz days, white-haired bubbes staying spry, and 40-something women showing a lot of skin — from 9:30 p.m. to well past 1 in the morning, when custodians are sweeping up as the faithful get in their last debkas and tcherkessias.

“I don’t like to miss a week,and it can take over your life if you’re not careful,” says Pahzeet Liebermann, a relative newcomer to Israeli folk dancing in her early 30s.

Welcome to the fast-growing world of Israeli folk dancing, when on any given Wednesday night, more than 200 people crowd Buttenweiser Hall to show off their Yemenite steps and mayims. It’s a world where new dances created in Israel whirl around the globe at breakneck speed thanks to the Internet.

At a time when so much about Israel is caught up in left-right politics and religious-secular tensions, folk dancing seems to create a safe space to connect to Israel on an apolitical level.

“Whereas everyone used to be of one heart about Israel, times have changed and polarization about what Jewish people feel about Israel is extreme,” says Ruth Goodman, who runs the 92nd Street Y’s program with Danny Uziel. “With folk dancing, though, wherever you are on the political spectrum you forget about while dancing.

“People are looking for an opportunity to take off the stress of the daily news from Israel and its politics, and escape into a marvelous atmosphere of just connecting to Israel and Judaism in whatever way works for them,” she says. “When you come to Israeli folk dancing, you just dance and feel a connection without having to justify your political or religious beliefs.”

The connection for many is powerful.

Liebermann stresses that “the point is we hang out together at dance because we’re friends now outside of dance, too — parties, Shabbat dinners, etc.”

Regulars From

Near And Far

Regulars are the norm here, but even regulars who move away go to great lengths to return to the dance floor. Fran Amkraut, a woman in her late 20 living in Los Angeles, says proudly that she arranged a recent business trip completely around a Wednesday night in New York City so she could come to the Y. Two El Al pilots are known to come to the Y to dance whenever they have a layover here. A dedicated group of Philadelphians comes almost every week.

Then there’s “Yossi” from Connecticut, who says he makes the two-hour drive each way every week because he’s looking for a wife. But before he walks away, he says with a wink and in heavily accented English, “Don’t write this, my wife will kill me.”

The chance at finding love on the dance floor, or companionship, or at the very least a date, is a big draw. At midnight on a recent Wednesday night, Uziel, who with Goodman also runs the Israeli Dance Institute, plays a brief siman tov u’mazel tov — for which the group spontaneously clasps hands and dances a traditional hora for Howie Goldman and Aliza Musleah, a middle-aged couple who met dancing and have just become engaged.

More than love, though, the participants speak of the strong sense of family and belonging that pervades the room.

“You might not know someone’s name, but you’ve seen them every week for 15 years,” says Ilana Brownstein, whose father is the former chair of the Israeli Dance Institute (IDI) and who met his wife at Israeli dancing.

Brownstein, an ob-gyn in her early 30s, usually dances with Mickey Huber, who is in his early 20s and the son of Alex Huber, who dances at the Y with his wife every week as well.

While the Y is considered the mecca of Israeli folk dancing in the U.S., the phenomenon in recent years has gained an international reach.

According to IDI Chairman Bob Levine, from Beijing to Brussels, there is virtually no Jewish community today without an Israeli dance session.” The IDI publishes a calendar six times a year of global Israeli folk dancing sessions and events: every weekend has an Israeli dance retreat or workshop (or “camp,” as it is known) going on somewhere in the world.

“The fast traffic with the Internet and communication technology has made Israeli dance a truly universal language,” Goodman says.

An Israeli pop singer chooses to work with a choreographer well before the album release, Uziel says. The choreographer makes a video teaching the new dance that is distributed around the world — Europe, China, Japan, Australia, North America — for session leaders and workshop directors to teach. Sometimes the choreographers themselves will make appearances as special camp guests.

According to Uziel, there are approximately 4,000 dances, although not all are in circulation. Isaac Herzig, an Israeli in his 60s who danced as a teen and then returned to it after his divorce, says he probably knows between 500 and 700 dances.

“Because there are so many dances, you need to go a few times a week to know them,” he said. Most people who come to Wednesdays at the Y dance at least one other time a week somewhere else.

Lack Of 'Folkiness'

Israeli folk dancing sessions at the Y opened in 1951, and Uziel started running the program with Goodman in 1975. Now in his early 70s, Uziel says that one significant change — especially relevant to the noticeable lack of “folksiness” in today’s incarnation of Israeli folk dancing — is that until the ’80s they danced to an accordionist. Today, Uziel and Goodman play the latest Israeli tunes through laptops hooked up to speakers on the stage.

Because of the rapid rise in the number of Israelis living in the diaspora, their increased presence is another change in the scene. Today, 60 to 65 percent of those at the Y are Israeli.

Goodman says in the last five years this has been reflected especially in the distances people travel to come to the 92nd Street Y sessions. She uses the analogy of secular Israelis who start lighting Shabbat candles when they move to America.

“They’re living here for awhile, but they don’t want to lose touch with Israel and their heritage. So they come to Israeli folk dancing as a way of staying connected.”

For the Americans too, coming to Israeli folk dance is a way of connecting to Israel and Israelis. While Israelis will request songs by popular artists like Ofra Haza who reflect contemporary Israeli culture, the Americans look for dances with “ethnic diversity” and that seem more “authentic,” such as those with noticeable Middle Eastern or Yemenite influences.

“People don’t come to just to support Israel though,” said Herzig, who travels to the Y from Philadelphia. “They come to dance and to socialize. But it is a way of connecting to Israel because otherwise, people would just as easily go to salsa or ballroom dancing.”

Israeli folk dance originated in the 1940s with the kibbutz movement and was traditionally associated with Zionist groups and youth movements. Until the 70s, the songs were connected to the land and the dancers were teenagers.

Today, Goodman calls Israeli dance “the great leveler”: the teenagers are grown up, the songs are the latest hits from Israeli pop culture, and, she says, everyone from truck drivers to lawyers to children of all ages come dance the same Israeli folk steps together.

Back on the dance floor, Liebermann is actually sitting out the set with some other seemingly single women, their legs swinging from the stage, their focus intense as they watch the swirling couples perform a series of partner dances.

“Some nights I don’t leave the dance floor once, and other nights I don’t have a partner so I have to sit out the couples’ sets,” she says. “Sometimes I feel I need a break, but then I can’t wait to come back the following week.” n

Israeli folk dancing at the 92nd Street Y’s Buttenweiser Hall begins every Wednesday with an instruction session 7-8 p.m.; open session 8:15 p.m.-12:45 a.m., $12 at the door. For location information and schedule updates, call the Israeli Folk Dance Hotline at (212) 415-5737