Rabbi Janet Marder

March 6, 2009

Be Happy!

Mr. Finkelstein, so the story goes, suffers severe pains in his chest and is rushed to the finest hospital in America , the Mayo Clinic in Rochester , Minnesota . For seven days, he receives treatment there.  Then suddenly, without explanation, he checks himself out and has himself transferred to a small, rundown Jewish hospital on New York ’s Lower East Side .

            The doctor on the ward is intrigued by his decision. “What was wrong with the Mayo Clinic?” he asks. “Was it the doctors? Didn’t they find out what was wrong with you?”

            “The doctors,” says Finkelstein, “were outstanding. Geniuses! I can’t complain.”

            “Was it the nurses? Weren’t they attentive enough? Were they cold, uncaring?”

            “The nurses were angels. No, I can’t complain.”

            “So was it the food? Too little, too bland, too boring? It must have been the food, yes?”

            “The meals were wonderful,” says Finkelstein. “They tasted of paradise. About the food, I can’t complain.”

            “So tell me, Mr. Finkelstein, why did you leave one of the greatest hospitals in the world and come here?”

          Mr. Finkelstein gives a big smile and says, “Because here – I can complain!”

          It’s been said that complaining is the national sport of the Jewish people. After 30 years in the rabbinate I can attest to the popularity of this past time in our community. It’s no wonder that Michael Wex called his book about Yiddish, the language of the Jews, “Born to Kvetch.”  Being Jewish is about many things, he says, but above all it is about kvetching, and the many pleasures of finding fault. He writes: “If the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” had been translated into Yiddish, it would have been called ‘(I Love to Keep Telling You That I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You That I’m Not Satisfied Is All That Can Satisfy Me)’.”

          Oddly enough, we Jews, the world’s experts at kvetching and complaining, have a tradition that repeatedly commands us to be happy. Or perhaps it’s not so odd. If being happy were our natural state, the Torah wouldn’t need to command it, for Torah never wastes time telling us to do things that we’d automatically do on our own. So for Jews, temperamentally inclined to be a teensy bit negative, happiness is a mitzvah, meaning a sacred religious obligation.

          The duty to be happy is at the center of many of our holidays. There’s Simchat Torah, for instance, which requires us to dance and sing and find joy in the Torah. There’s Sukkot, a harvest festival on which we’re commanded: “hayita ach sameach – you shall have nothing but joy” [Deut.16]. There’s Shabbat, the weekly festival that calls us to fill our time with “oneg” – pleasure and delight.  And most especially there’s Purim, the festival we’ll celebrate on Monday night.

          Here at Beth Am and in Jewish communities everywhere, Purim requires grown men and women to laugh, carouse, and make themselves ridiculous in every possible way.  The Talmud, in fact, instructs us to start preparing ourselves emotionally for this orgy of the absurd two weeks in advance, as soon as the Hebrew month of Adar begins. “Mishenichnas Adar,” it says, “marbim b’simcha. When Adar comes in, we increase our joy” [Ta’anit 29a]. Or, in its more colloquial form: “Be happy – it’s Adar!”

          Now, I’m sure that many of you are already formulating a complaint about this mitzvah of being happy in Adar. How in the world can our Sages expect us to feel an emotion on command? Don’t emotions simply bubble up spontaneously in response to events? We can’t force ourselves to feel happy just because the Talmud tells us to – especially with all that’s going on in the world right now. Just look at President Obama, just 44 days into his term – he’s already turning gray from all the tsuris.

          Can there be a mitzvah, a religious obligation, to be happy? I do think that our Sages believed we have a measure of control over our emotions. In this respect they anticipated cognitive behavioral therapy, which teaches that our emotions are caused by our thoughts, rather than by external events and situations. It’s not my next-door neighbor who is making me mad, in other words; it’s my thoughts about my next-door neighbor. If I change my thoughts, I can change the way I feel about the S.O.B.

          In the same way, our tradition expects us to cultivate particular emotions by directing our thinking in specific ways. Regardless of what’s happening in our personal lives at that moment, on the High Holy Days, we’re given meditations that will provoke a sense of awe and solemnity. On Pesach we read a Haggadah intended to help us experience what it is to be enslaved, followed by the ecstasy of liberation. And on Simchat Torah, Sukkot and Purim, we’re given  techniques specifically designed to lift us up into joy. Dancing, singing, eating delicious food, drinking, dressing up in silly costumes, telling a story of our people’s triumph over death.

          Imagine this: for two thousand years Jews have been psyching themselves into a state of joy and laughter in the midst of circumstances that might otherwise have led them into crushing despair. Living in exile, often in poverty and hunger, objects of hatred and contempt, they consciously created an internal mood that defied their external surroundings. In times of darkness they affirmed with passion the words they read in the book of Esther: “The Jews [of old] had light and gladness, happiness and honor -- so may it be for us, as well."

          For two thousand years, our people came together for a holiday, a Yom Tov, literally a “good day,” to create shared moments of goodness, no matter how bad the rest of their lives might be.

            Laughing and carousing on Purim is not merely a display of irreverence and zaniness.  It’s an act of freedom, and it’s an act of courage. It asserts that we, and not others, are in charge of our own emotional life. We are not victims of what happens to us. We determine how we will respond to the events that touch our lives; we reserve the right to think and feel as we choose.

          It’s a lesson that transcends Purim, of course. It’s a characteristic Jewish survival strategy that speaks to us in our own moments that verge on despair. It affirms the power of the mind to transform reality and preserve hope. It says that the world can do what it likes to me, and say what it likes about me, but no one can tell me how I should see myself or feel about my life.

          And why is it happiness, of all emotions, that the holiday of Purim seeks to cultivate in our kvetchy community? Why is happiness a mitzvah, a religious obligation, for the Jewish people?

          For a reason that’s made very clear in the Purim story itself. Despair is a paralyzing emotion. Those who are sunk in the darkness can’t motivate themselves to rise up and take positive action. So we see that when the wicked Haman launches his plot to exterminate the Jews, the stunned community reacts at first with apathy and despair. Mordechai puts on sackcloth and ashes, the clothing of a mourner, and goes about the city weeping. In the provinces the Jews likewise put on sackcloth and sit in silent desolation.

          Only when Esther urges Mordechai to take off his mourning clothes do the two of them begin to focus on constructive action to save their people. Without divine intervention, they find within themselves the resources to do what has to be done, and a miracle takes place: a miracle wrought by human beings acting with courage, creativity and determination.

          Our Sages understood that always and everywhere, despair is the enemy of human deliverance. It robs us of motivation. It robs us of hope. It convinces us that things will never change and life will never get better.

          Our Sages knew how easy it is for all of us to sink into that darkness when times are very hard. And so they devoted their best energies to figuring out how to teach the Jews, consummate kvetchers that we are, to be happy, despite everything. They gave us a tradition designed to resist despair and cultivate joy and provoke defiant laughter.

          And every Saturday night, when we leave the quiet shelter of Shabbat and go back to the challenge of the real world, our Sages gave us words to chant in the Havdala prayer that would forever remind us of the brave and joyful spirit of Purim:

          “Layehudim hayta ora v’simcha v’sason vikar. The Jews [of old] had light and gladness, happiness and honor. Ken tihiyeh lanu -- so may it be for us, as well."

          Chodesh tov – May you have a good month; and happy Adar.