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In the 4th Perek of Brachot (28b), the Gemara talks about the parallel between the spine and the Amida, a parallel that ends up supporting body and soul.
The Gemara says that the 18 vertebrae in the spine parallel the 18 Brachot in the Amida. And if necessary you can even find 19.
Why the spine?
The spine allows the person to be "omed" - to stand. The body is both the framework and the structure for the neshama before G-d. When they stand together, intertwined within each other, a human being can bow and reach the sky in the same instant; be bent by finite limits while being "pogea" (see Brachot 26b), while touching the Infinite.
Also, the Mishna there in the 4th Perek talks about direction. One should face the right direction, towards the Mikdash, towards Yerushalayim. Be "panim el panim", face to face. Or as R. Eliezer put it earlier on the same page, stand when you come to G-d and "da lifnei mi attah omed" - know before whom you stand. Know - through your body, know.
And this brings us to dance.
In Shmuel, it says that David HaMelech was mecharker (dancing wildly) while bring the aron up to Yerushalayim. Looking at him, Michal his wife was critical. Let me paraphrase:
"David - why are you dancing so wildly? It's impressing the lowlifes, it's turning on the maidservants!"
To which he answered: "I would do this and more before and for G-d."
What did Michal see? She saw dance as dangerous, promiscuous, and certainly lacking nobility. How could a king dance like that? He should be regal...a representative of majesty, one step below the Almighty. To Michal, the body was a symbol, seperate from the neshama.
And David? His body was intertwined with his soul. His body wasn't just a symbol -his body was a vehicle of avoda, his body was filled with simchat kodesh. His neshama expressed itself as guf, in dance that expressed simcha beyond words. Couldn't Michal get it?
But Michal only knew 'Artistic Dance'; 'Social Dance' whose significance is either romantic, erotic, or symbolic. Whereas the dance of David HaMelech is the dance of the transcendant potential of the human being - dynamic, whole and intertwined, neshama and guf before G-d. It is 'Jewish Dance' - each step an Avodat HaShem. It is this dance that we try to do at a wedding, that chasidim try to do, that if every step could be it would be ideal. Teffila is meant to be integrated in a similar way - thus the importance of spine and of posture.
With this in mind we could better understand a few scenes from Tanach and Midrash. Two examples:
The Aggada states that Jezebel was rewarded for one thing - dancing at weddings. One wonders why - what's so special? Perhaps this is how to understand it. Sometimes even someone who doesn't usually act as a person inspired and involved with Torah, indeed intellectually or culturally or ideologically opposed to Torah, still reverberates with an aspect of Torah. Jezebel had the ability to go beyond dancing as a symbol of celebration. She understood that the dance that is meant to be mesameach chatan and kallah is not a symbolic gesture, but an intertwining of our physical selves with the neshama that relates to G-d, to a creative force that her idols only symbolized. She may have been an idolater, but when she danced she saw what even Michal could not see.
Similarly, in this week's parsha (46:29) people are disturbed by the Midrash that says that Yaakov responded to finally seeing Yosef by saying the Shma. How could that be? This should have been a reunion where Yaakov acted as Yosef did - with terrific emotional intensity.
But here was the difference between Yaakov and Yosef. Yaakov was totally whole. His emotional self - a trait we share with animals, in a sense a part of body - was intertwined and integrated with his neshama. To respond on one level was to respond on the other. So just as avodat haShem can be dynamically done in dance, it can equally be done in meditation or in prayer. How one integrates is a function of that person's uniqueness. And thus, Yaakov's simcha at seeing his son immediately transcended itself into simcha with G-d; to him those things could not be separated, for here was the minute he had been waiting for, secretly expecting, since he was "shomer et hadavar" after hearing Yosef's youthful dreams. Here was the minute that he had faith G-d would grant him after all the years of patience and prayer. Thus, he said the Shma.
On the other hand, Yosef was not integrated as his father was. Perhaps years of hiding himself from the Mitzrim, from his brothers, from his father, had prevented him from creating the traits his father had. And so he expressed his emotions as one who is yet to intertwine guf and neshama; one at a time.
Perhaps this is the intent of the Gur Arye (the Maharal) in his comments on this Rashi.
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