Through the cracks

I recently interviewed Hollywood screenwriter Dave Holstein for this issue’s spotlight on arts and entertainment. Among his credits, Holstein co-wrote the Disney/Pixar hit sequel Inside Out 2 .

The film takes place in the mind of a girl named Riley Anderson, where a mix of personified emotions direct Riley’s thoughts and actions. At the heart of the films is the character Joy, played by Amy Poehler, who serves as the literal embodiment of joy. Through Joy and her counterpart emotions, we learn we can’t experience true joy without feeling other emotions-like sadness, anxiety, and fear.

Who knows better than the Jewish people about the dance of holding our sorrow simultaneously with our joy? On the surface, Jewish joy might seem like an oxymoron. For thousands of years, our people have faced tsuris, hate, and persecution. What the heck do we have to be joyful about?

But if we dig a little deeper, our joy tracks. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote: “It is one of the most poignant facts about Judaism, and the Jewish people, that our history has been shot through with tragedy–yet Jews never lost the capacity to rejoice, to celebrate in the heart of darkness, to sing the Lord’s song even in a strange land.”

Indeed, we Jews are super adept at balancing our past–and present–struggles, while still managing to let the joy in through the cracks. As Leonard Cohen writes in the song “Anthem:” “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

The Hebrew word for “joy”– simcha –appears 94 times in the Bible. In the book of Deuteronomy , Moses declares that the Israelites will one day rejoice in the promised land. The prophet recognized their 40 years of struggle in the wilderness would transform into joy once they returned to their ancient homeland.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov famously said “It is a great mitzvah to be happy, always.” On the surface, one might think he was being glib–even tone deaf–to the inevitable sorrows of the human condition. But I’m guessing that this rabbi-who suffered from crippling depression and died of tuberculosis at just 38–understood that to be human is to struggle. I’ll bet he recognized that joy and sorrow are dynamic feelings that we’re constantly cycling between, that one sentiment can precipitate the other, and that two emotions can even coexist.

The Jewish tradition prioritizes joy over sorrow. For instance, mourners are commanded to take a respite from sitting shiva in order to honor the joy of Shabbat. Weddings, too, take precedence over funerals because a funeral recalls the past, while a wedding gives us hope for the future.

Let’s follow this metaphor into the kitchen–where we Jews tend to find our happy place. Think about when baking a cake or virtually any other dessert: The recipe almost always calls for a dash of salt. That’s because salt actually enhances the ability of our taste buds to detect sweetness. The same is true for life experiences: The bitter times allow us to cherish the sweet ones.

This past year has tested the Jewish people’s capacity for joy more than any other time since the Holocaust. Somehow, through all our pain, we still let joy in through the cracks. Let’s pray for more joy and fewer cracks, and that our salty tears yield far more honey in the new year.