Increased Joy? by Rabbi Sandra Kviat
Rav said ”Just as with the beginning of Av we curtail joy, so with the beginning of Adar, we increase joy”
(BT Taanit 29a)
It’s the month of Adar and our tradition encourages or even demands that we increase joy as we approach Purim with all its upside-downness. It’s always problematic to be commanded to have a feeling, whether love (as in the v’ahavta prayer, just after the shema, “and you shall love the Eternal One”...). Perhaps it is less of a command or instruction and more of a recommendation?
But what is joy? “... is it the search for meaning and wholeness in the confusing world in which we live? Is it striving for saccharine happiness with no cares, no need to grapple with anything? What is the real happiness we are after - the relaxed cheerfulness of painlessness or the joy of creativity and tikkun?”, Rabbi Dalia Marx asks.
Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s wrote: “Happiness is something you pursue. But joy is not. It discovers you. It has to do with a sense of connection to other people or to God. It comes from a different realm than happiness. It is a social emotion. It is the exhilaration we feel when we merge with others. It is the redemption of solitude…”
“And when we speak of joy here, we are not speaking of fun. Joy is a deep release of the soul, and it includes death and pain. Joy is any feeling fully felt, any experience we give our whole being to. We are conditioned to choose pleasure and to reject pain, but the truth is, any moment of our life fully inhabited, any feeling fully felt, any immersion in the full depth of life, can be the source of deep joy”.
It is hard to feel joy at the moment, or to let it find you as Rabbi Sacks encourages. Feeling the sun on my face, looking at all the flowers popping up is helping, days getting longer, seeing summer on the horizon is giving a boost. But it’s a ‘schizophrenic’ feeling as one of the Israeli rabbis explained in a meeting the other day. We’re grieving for what has happened in Israel, we listen to our family and friends there and we fervently hope that our loved ones will not be further harmed. The situation in Gaza is incomprehensible. It is so awful that it’s hard to listen or look at the news. It’s so devastating that I’ve not been able to write about it, or engage with it, feeling a sense of paralysis that many are feeling, and a sense of existential dread.
It’s deeply affecting relationships here, whether in schools or between communities, but we are continuously working on holding on to those bonds, talking to headteachers, meeting with the Council who is doing a lot of work trying to hold the different communities and make us all feel safe.
Many of the Chavurah members are working hard in their own job settings or amongst friends, reaching out, calling out anti-semitic or islamophobic language, calling for calm and compassion in how we treat each other. It can be wearying, but it's important.
And it takes courage, something that the b'nei mitzvah groups experienced this week, when we were visited by the Palestinian-Israeli peace activist Mira Awad, who told us about her life growing up in a mixed village of Muslim, Christian and Druze neighbours in Israel, about the peace activists in Gaza that she works with, and their situation, and about how she holds onto hope. And most importantly, she told us how changing the narrative, how we see and understand things is what drives her. Having the courage to reach out, to talk, but also to know when to listen and when to step back (she burned out a couple of years ago).
It doesn't sound very joyful, and yet somehow there was a sense of joy in connecting with her, in hearing her story about a childhood and youth many of us would recognise from our own lives, but also the pain of becoming aware of her minority status as an Israeli-Arab citizen, and the prejudice that came with it, even in a mixed city as Haifa. It was deeply moving, and in her and her stories we felt a sense of hope.
Though we can’t pursue joy, we can make sure there is space for it to find us. Taking time to be outside in the sunshine, making time to see a friend for a chat, doing the small things that bring you a sense of calm and gratitude, and having fun with others. Doing something for others. Mishloach manot - small food packages that we give to others during Purim, are a way of helping others find joy, and in the process of making them, I always find some joy as well. We are making them this Sunday at the Purim party, to give to each other AND to give as iftarpresents to Wightman Road Mosque as they break the fast on Sunday evening.