As you may know, our Board and I get together every year during Ellul for a very appropriate sort of "year end review" of how things have been going for the Jewish community and for us personally as we work together. At this meeting we always try to set some goals for the next year, and you've no doubt seen a little note here, or heard mention at the High Holy Days, that we are going to try to focus towards some goal or another in the next year. Often our goals have to do with important but prosaic matters like, "Try to get more people to volunteer for things," or "Do more programming for this or that sector of our community." But this year at our meeting -- which for a variety of reasons actually happened well before Ellul began -- we had a heartfelt new idea for a community focus: INCREASE JOY. This is actually paired with another sweetheart of a goal: INCREASE THE HONOR WITH WHICH WE TREAT EACH OTHER
. Both are delicious and enticing intentions, and I look forward to doing my part to manifest each. And both are obviously profoundly interconnected. But I can't stop thinking about JOY. In fact I've carried the word around with me since we had this goals conversation several months ago now. I've had fun mentioning this goal to people as I schmooze with them. Every time I say, "Our community goal is to increase joy," people sigh and smile. "Oh, that sounds WONDERFUL!" Ahhhhhh
Needless to say -- and I feel like I've said this an awful lot this past year -- this has been a challenging year in which to feel and express joy. And I am not sure that the next year promises much more happiness out there in the world of events and politics. If last year's events in this country and in Afghanistan, in Israel and Palestine and elsewhere, felt like a health crisis, this year they are starting to feel more like a chronic illness. Not that we should ever despair of social healing, or cease working towards it -- but it may be time to start asking how to cope spiritually, emotionally and communally, just in case the world's difficulties go on awhile despite our best efforts.
The more I walk around with the word JOY in my head, the more of a conundrum it becomes. In my experience there are at least two completely different species of joy. There is the kind of joy which is induced by an immediate experience -- ecstatic, emotional joy -- joy aroused by (fill in the blank with your portal-to-joy of choice here.) For example, last week at our women's retreat, two friends from Eureka led us in some "devotional davvenen," a form of free-form chanting whose sound, rising from our own vocal cords, mingling with our friends and floating in the redwood trees, was absolutely transporting. There was something about the setting, the fervor, the words and the sounds themselves which, in my experience, simply lifted me out of any mundane considerations, any grumpiness, any wish I were somewhere else, any criticism, any distraction, any fidgetiness, any distance. I was swept up in an ecstasy of sound and holy focus. Absolute joy! (And a form I look forward to enjoying further here at home) Just for the sake of shorthand, I might call this species "hasidic joy," in honor of the hasidic movement which created and fine-tuned these techniques and tools for reaching joy and fervor in community and prayer.
Then there is a completely other kind of joy, which seems to have little relationship with immediate experience, some kind of awareness, a connectedness, a confidence, a sense of hope, a quality of being held, even when one's immediate experience may be quite challenging. It seems to come from a way of understanding life, a philosophy or theology that holds one firm even when things are rocking and rolling. Some people are gifted with this quality of joy in the most difficult moments of their lives. I might call this "psalms joy," in honor of the dozens of biblical psalms which say things like (I just opened my book of Psalms at random and found): "Save me from evildoers/ Deliver me from murderers/ But I will sing of Your strength/ Extol each morning Your faithfulness;/ For You have been my haven,/ A refuge in time of trouble." (Ps. 59: 3 and 17) Both the hasidic and the psalms species of joys seem to involve singing -- but what different songs!
And then there is a kind of joy which uniquely happens in community, sometimes even commingled with some sorrow. In the past week or so I have been at two houses of mourning for shiva minyans and also helped to issue a get (a religious divorce) to a couple which is divorcing. In each case friends and community members came, all carrying gifts of food. I watched these circles of community listen so attentively, hug and kiss and offer words of comfort, pour wine, wash dishes. And in each situation there was a moment -- or more than a moment -- when the person in the center of the circle had a chance to melt, to open up, to fall backwards into those arms. There is something very joyful about this, right in the middle of the sorrow.
And -- oh no -- I keep thinking of other kinds! -- there is a kind of joy which happens in a very special sort of reflective solitude, when things get very quiet, when you can converse with your own spirit.
And there is a kind of joy which comes of being well-understood. Someone I just met told me of a religious teacher who says that, underneath all other yearnings of the spirit, is the longing to be completely understood by another soul. There is a particular joy, which most of us know well, when you really notice some corner of the elegance and grace of the natural world.
And of course there is the great, high mitzvah of having fun -- attainable only when you're not trying too hard but have nonetheless made space and set aside impediments, the holy joy of light-heartedness and foolery, often spontaneous but still earnestly to be pursued...
It seems obvious to me that we have the capacity to lead lives full of joy -- not necessarily lives of ease or good fortune, but lives still full of delight, meaning and connection. In fact, we might look at the entire enterprise of having a Jewish community, Jewish study and practice, as tools for cultivating this joy. We can have as much joy as we want. And we can help each other to get there.
Well, my dear, sweet community of friends, teachers and fellow-explorers, a new year dawns for us all. You are, as always, the source of huge joy in my life. I thank you for another year of life together and look forward to whatever comes to us next. I wish, for us and all the world, a new year of peace and plenty. But whether my wish is granted or not, I am confident that we can enter the new year together joyfully and expectantly, with hope for more love, more connection and more delight. L'shana tovah!
© 2002 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 07/08/2002 (rge)