T81 (Tinyana) PNC - K'she-Adam M'sameach Atzmo b'Simchah Shel Mitzvah — Dancing as the Lifting of All Things Called Regel

**"K'she-adam m'sameach atzmo b'simchah shel mitzvah, v'ha-simchah gedolah kol kach ad she-noga'as ad raglav — heyno she-m'rakeid me-chamas simchah — zeh ha-bechinah nikra: 'v'navi l'vav chochmah'"** (Tehillim 90:12). Rabbeinu opens with the most physically grounded teaching in all Tinyana: the moment when joy is so big it *runs down to the feet* and you start to *dance*. That moment of *m'rakeid me-chamas simchah* IS the bechinah of *v'navi l'vav chochmah*. Why? Because *raglayim* are bechinas **Netzach and Hod**, and Netzach-Hod are **bechinas nevi'im** (per the kabbalistic axis). When the simchah of the lev floods *down* into Netzach-Hod and they *rise* in dance, the *nevi'im* themselves are being lifted *l'vav* — into the heart that originated the simchah. Dancing is therefore not exuberance-spillover; it is the *literal mechanism* by which the prophet-faculties of Netzach and Hod are translated upward into the heart-faculty of chochmah. Each lift of the foot in a beis-medrash dance is *v'navi l'vav chochmah* in slow motion. **Now the chiddush extends: not only the body's feet rise.** When you learn Torah or do a mitzvah with simchah-that-touches-the-feet and lifts the feet upward, *all the somchei keshot* — the *supporters of the Torah* — are elevated together. **"צֶדֶק יִקְרָאֵהוּ לְרַגְלוֹ"** (Yeshayah 41:2) — *Tzedek calls him to His foot*. *Tzedek* is the Torah and the mitzvah (Chullin 89a: *tzedek tedabrun*; Tehillim 119:172: *ki kol mitzvosecha tzedek*). So the pasuk reads, on Rabbeinu's translation: *Torah calls upward, to itself, anything that is bechinas regel*. Whatever is *down at foot-level* in the world — whatever is grouped under the metaphor *regel* — gets called up by the *tzedek* of the Torah-with-simchah.

**Now Rabbeinu's tour of *kol ha-d'varim ha-nikra'im regel*** — the catalog of things metaphorically called *foot* in Tanach and Chazal, all of which the dancing-foot-of-simchah lifts: **(1) Lashon ha-ra**: bechinas "לֹא רָגַל עַל לְשֹׁנוֹ" (Tehillim 15:3) — *he did not slander on his tongue*. The verb-stem ר-ג-ל makes *ragal* the very name of slander. The dancer's foot lifts also the rough-talk that lives at *that* foot-level of speech. **(2) Mammon**: bechinas **"וְאֵת הַיְקוּם אֲשֶׁר בְּרַגְלֵיהֶם"** (Devarim 11:6) — *and the substance that was at their feet* (Pesachim 119a: ze mamono shel adam she-maamido al raglav, wealth keeps a man on his feet). Mammon is *regel*; so when you dance with simchah of a mitzvah, *parnasah itself rises*. **(3) Lower madreigos generally**: every level called "feet" in Kabbalah and aggadic language. **"Tzedek yikra'ehu l'raglo"** is not picking one referent; it is *calling all of them up at once* by the same call. **(4) The wife — and from her, children**. Bava Basra 10a: *mi she-ein lo banim, y'samach es ishto bidvar mitzvah* — one who lacks children should *gladden his wife with a matter of mitzvah*. Why specifically through *mitzvah-simchah*? Because **isha nikres regel** — bechinas **"רַגְלֵי חֲסִידָיו יִשְׁמֹר"** (Shmuel I 2:9; Zohar Vayera 112b). So through the simchah-shel-mitzvah he is *lifting his wife* (the *regel* of his life) and connecting her to *tzedek* — the bechinah of the letter **ה** that the mitzvah is rooted in (Bereshis 47:23 "הֵא לָכֶם זֶרַע" — "here is seed for you"; Eruvin 70b *bera kar'a d'avuha* — the *son* is the *leg* of his father). The chain: simcha → wife elevated → connected to tzedek/heh → seed → son = the new "leg" of the father. The chassidic-style chizuk embedded in the halachah of B"B 10 — *help your wife receive simcha-of-mitzvah, and the very leg-channel through which children come opens.* **(5) Emunah**: bechinas **"בָּא חֲבַקּוּק וְהֶעֱמִידָן עַל אַחַת"** (Makkos 24a) — Chavakuk grounded everything on *one* foot: *v'tzaddik b'emunaso yichyeh*. Emunah is the foot of all foots. So *also emunah is lifted by simchas Torah u'mitzvah*. **The take-home — written in plain prose**: every category of life that has slumped to the floor — your slipped speech, your strained parnasah, your strained marriage, your fragile emunah, the lower madreigos of your soul — is *liftable by dancing-with-simchah-of-mitzvah.* The mechanism is structural: foot-level things rise when the actual body-feet rise in joy of mitzvah. The dance is not a coping device; it is the *call upward* (*tzedek yikra'ehu l'raglo*) by which all that is *at foot-level* in your world is summoned to the heart. **"V'chein kol ha-d'varim ha-nikra'im regel — nis'alim."** And so all the things called regel — all of them — are lifted.