Which is the right way, that of sorrow or that of joy?

(by Rabbi Tracy Nathan)

Ten days ago on Rosh Hashanah, our Torah and Haftarah readings evoked the birth of children, of the patriarch Yitzhak/Isaac and the prophet Shmuel/Samuel, son of Hannah. This week our Torah reading evokes the death of children. Vayedaber adonai el moshe acharei mot shnei b’nei aharon Adonai spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron (Vayikra 16:1)

We Jews have such an interesting way of marking the New Year. In these ten days in which we lay the ground for the New Year, we lift up Life with all its promise and hope, and at the same time we lift up Death. It is as if between the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we have grown up all too quickly. We have lived a whole life, and it is a life marked with loss.

Unlike the secular New Year, marked mythically and often in actuality with revelry, hedonism, and drunkenness, the rituals and liturgy of the Jewish New Year invite us to contemplate mortality. Rather than cast aside the implications of yet another year gone by with noise, champagne, caviar - what do we do? We fast! We neither eat nor drink. We do not wear slinky black dresses nor tuxedos. We traditionally have worn simple white garments or kitels that will become our shrouds upon our death.

It is not that the Jewish tradition does not value joy. Indeed, the next holiday coming up, Sukkot, is called z’man simchateinu, the time of our joy. The question is: what is the best way to get to that deep experience of joy?

The early Hassidic rabbi, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, pondered a related question. He was asked: which is the right way, that of sorrow or that of joy? In other words, what is the best response to life such as it is.

He answered, “There are two kinds of sorrow and two kinds of joy. When a person broods over the misfortunes that have come upon him or her, when he or she cowers in a corner and despairs of help - that is a bad kind of sorrow, concerning which it is said: “The Divine Presence does not dwell in a place of dejection.”

The other kind of sorrow is the honest grief of a person who knows what he or she lacks.

The same is true of joy. One who is devoid of inner substance and, in the midst of empty pleasures, does not feel or try to fill his lack, is a fool.

But one who is truly joyful is like a person whose house has burned down, who feels a need deep in his soul and begins to build anew. Over every stone that is laid, his heart rejoices.

There are two kinds of sorrow and two kinds of joy. Levi Yitzhak suggests that the positive kind of sorrow is the honest grief of a person who knows what he or she lacks. Rather than a New Year in which one goes the route of pleasure, so as to cover up the lack, and to cover up failure and losses, the Jewish New Year instead seeks to expose them. To look at them, acknowledge them so that we might let go of what has been lost in order to get ready to live again.

And so on Yom Kippur we take an honest look at our human condition. As we let go of the year gone by, we reflect on finitude itself. We acknowledge that all things human come to an end. We consider that our own losses are something that we share in common with all of humanity.

The intention is not to lead us into despair—though between the unetaneh tokef prayer, the martyrology, and yizkor we are brought very close to the edge of despair. But we are not, as Levi Yitzhak said, to brood over the misfortunes that have come upon us, to cower in a corner and despair of hope. Rather, we are provided with the opportunity for honest grieving. To take whatever pain we are bringing into the year from this past year or years prior and at least look at them, so that healing can take place now or be offered as a possibility and hope for the future.

When I began, I described the passage between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the experience of living an entire lifetime. When we are born, we live in the present, fully open to the world. No regret of the past, no fear of the future. Just taking it all in, all the excitement and wonder of the world. And then we begin to lose things and persons. A favorite blanket. A broken doll. A beloved pet dies in our arms. Summer camp comes to an end. A best friend moves away. A dream is broken or faded. A lover breaks our heart. Divorce. Laid off from a job. Our hair turns gray. Hairlines recede. A loved one dies. Our health is assaulted or withers. Our youth fades.

How do we continue to keep ourselves open to the wonders of the world, to the blessing the universe offers us when we keep losing, when we keep grieving, when we keep fearing more loss and ultimately death, when we have been wounded over and over again? When this seems to be our destiny, our fate?

And why does our liturgy today keep reminding us of this:
Man’s origin is dust and his end is dust. He spends his life earning bread. He is like a clay vessel, easily broken, like withering grass, a fading flower,
a passing shadow, a fugitive cloud, a fleeting breeze,
scattering dust, a vanishing dream.

Might it not be easier if we could just forget the regrets, the disappointment, the passage of time, forget what we are missing - and drink and dance and eat fine food instead?

But that, as Levi Yitzhak tells us, is the joy of the fool. Of the one whom in the midst of empty pleasures, does not feel or try to fill his lack. It is not yet the best kind of joy.

When we first read about the death of Aaron’s sons, there is a mitzvah that follows the narrative - it is directed towards Aaron and his priestly descendants. The Divine command is not to drink wine or strong drink when they go in to do their sacred ritual work. (Vayikra 10:9) Perhaps there is a psychological understanding of the drive towards that which will block out fear and pain, the fear of entering the sacred place that turned into the grave of the two sons, and the pain at the ever present reminder of that loss while doing the work of the priest. God offers an alternative, to come into the presence of God with eyes open and not to put off grieving in that honest way that is so essential to healthy living.

To be human is to be mortal and inevitably to suffer. We suffer because we love. We form relationships, attachments. Think of the alternative - the lack of the ability to suffer is called apathy. One must live a life without deep human relationships to avoid suffering. To suppress the experience of grief and suffering in human life, it becomes necessary to dampen our passion for life and mute our experience of joy.

We are creatures who yearn to love and be loved, from birth to death. When we love and value people and things that we have been given on this earth, we inevitably will be sad when we lose them.

It is both a beautiful and holy thing ‘to love what death can touch’. And though this is a painful thing, it is not a bad thing. It is the honest grief of a person who knows what he or she lacks. And for Levi Yitzhak, it is the first and necessary step towards deep joy.

Before we get to Sukkot, to that z’man simchateinu, that time of joy, we need Yom Kippur. Jewish wisdom understands that even in the promise of the new, even with the anticipation of joy, there is a sense of loss - loss in ways that we can anticipate and in ways that we do not anticipate.

When Scott and I got engaged, I was so happy. And then about a week or so later, I started to feel melancholy. I remember walking over to his apartment thinking about how my life would change, how my identity would change. As I walked, I reflected on the self I knew as an unmarried woman.

For some time I had been bitter about my status - I was a single woman in my thirties and it was even harder being a single female rabbinical student in New York City. I found it difficult to go to weddings and rejoice in the happiness of my friends. I worked hard during those years and finally got to the point where I could celebrate the simchas of friends and family and truly rejoice with them. I had even gotten to a place where I was able to enjoy being single and independent and to respect and love the person I had become.

Now with my approaching wedding, my identity would be shifting. I would no longer have the excitement of going to a party and trying to attract someone. I would not experience the high of falling in love. I felt sadness in the anticipation of what I would leave behind - and I felt myself beginning to grieve. By the time I reached Scott’s apartment, I was in a real state and immediately poured out these feelings of loss to him. And then he jumped down, laid himself out on the ground and grasped my ankle with both arms and said with such love and good humor and affection, “I’m gonna be your ball and chain.”

That moment was such a blessing to me - the honesty and the laughter. We could acknowledge the inevitable sense of loss that one feels with change, even when it is something we have wanted and hoped for and that we knew would bring us joy.

Why do people cry at weddings? Probably for all different reasons, but I would venture that most of them have to do with loss mixed in with joy. One person cries for the loss of her friend who is getting married and things will never be the same between them. Another thinks of his divorce. A parent cries with the paradox of joy at a child’s finding their life partner and their own sense of loss as that child moves on to start their own family.

Think about why “Sunrise, Sunrise,” is so popular at weddings. It names those bittersweet feelings. Is this the little girl I carried?…Swiftly fly the years. One season following another, laden with happiness and tears.

A wedding is a life-cycle event. It marks a time in life of change, what has been will now be different. It marks the passage of time. Just as the New Year marks the passage of time.

I think when we have the experience of crying at a wedding ceremony and then dancing with joy afterwards, we feel we have been to a really good wedding. For a moment, we let ourselves open up to what might be missing in our lives, to let our hearts open to that moment filled with both sadness and the fullness of joy. Is this not what the breaking of the glass is about during the wedding ceremony? A recognition of mortality in the midst of a time of deep joy - I would say it enhances the feeling of the preciousness of that joy, the preciousness of love whenever it is felt and witnessed.

Ultimately, all the contemplation of mortality, finitude, loss, grief during Yom Kippur is in the service of life and joy. The experience of fasting and standing and praying alters our mind and emotions, helps us to turn the filters off, to get out of our mind and open our hearts. To come close to death, to touch mortality so that we might have new eyes to appreciate the blessings and beauty of life on this earth. To get out of our minds and open our hearts so that we might say what we need to say to those whom we love.

There are two kinds of sorrow and two kinds of joy. Levi Yitzhak teaches us that the one who is truly joyful is like a person whose house has burned down, who feels a need deep in his soul and begins to build anew. Over every stone that is laid, his heart rejoices.

In the Babylonian Talmud in Masekhet Ta’anit 26b, which is focused around public fast days, we learn from Rabbi Shimon ben Gambliel the following: There never were in Israel greater days of joy than the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur. The 15th of Av (Tu B’Av) followed the devastating commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples on the 9th of Av (Tisha B’Av). On these days, the daughters of Jerusalem would walk out in white garments that they borrowed in order not to put to shame any one who had none…The daughters of Jerusalem came out and danced in the vineyards exclaiming as they danced: “Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself. Do not set your eyes on beauty but set your eyes on family. Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that reveres God, she shall be praised.

Acharei mot, after the death. We contemplate death, we grieve for our losses so that we might let them go gently and make ourselves ready for new life, for the hope and promise of this New Year. After the catharsis of honest grief, the relief of tears, our hearts that have been closed up by disappointment, sadness, regret, pain begin to open up to the point where the daughters of Jerusalem must run off to the fields and dance and invite in love. To love that which death can touch. To go rushing and dancing into the vineyards and declare: Fruit of the vine! We have no need of your benefit! We are already in z’man simchateinu, the time of our joy.
G’mar hatimah tovah

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