Thought I would share my High Holy Day sermon before I preach it at 7PM at the Prospect Park Picnic House:
“All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unique in it’s unhappiness”
Considered one of the most famous opening lines of any novel ever written, these words from Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenena speak to a bias inherent in all of western literature: being happy is boring, unhappiness is interesting.
However, this is not a sermon about Anna Karenena. Rather it is a sermon about an issue raised in Rachel Kadish’s contemporary novel, Tolstoy Lied. Published a few years ago, Kadish tells the story of Tracy Farber, an English professor, who spends much of the book challenging the idea that you have to suffer to be interesting. Why, Farber asks, does Western literature (and Western culture) pay so much attention to those that suffer and ignore those that are happy?
One doesn’t need to look far to see our bias. Anna Karenina ends when Anna throws herself in front of a train. Crime and Punishment ends with Raskelnikov rotting in jail. At the end of Great Expectations, Pip returns home after eleven relatively unsuccessful years, forlorn and with little to show.
The interesting thing about all of these novels is that they have other strong characters who end up happy. Some because of love, others because of hard work. However, few remember them. They are all alike. They are just not that interesting.
The message of these books (and pretty much all of western culture) is that being happy is not enough. One must strive for complication. One must seek out anxiety. To live in love and peace is to be like everyone else.
“All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unique in it’s unhappiness”
Our bias against happiness is real. Our lives are filled with anxiety, pain, disappointment, and fear. For many these emotions are important. They are normal when we lose a loved one or are forced to make an unsettling change. But often, people make a conscious choice to avoid happiness. Maybe we have a co-worker who chooses to be martyr for work. Perhaps we have a friend who jumps from relationship to relationship, because constantly breaking up and finding someone new is far more exciting than contentment and commitment. Or maybe we have a family member who feels that the world is always out to get them, and makes their complaints into a self-fulfilling prophesy.
There’s a famous joke that sums up this thinking.
Finkelstein, so the story goes, suffers severe pains in the chest and is rushed to the finest hospital in America, Massachusetts General. For seven days he receives treatment there. Then, without explanation, he checks out and has himself transferred to a small, rundown, Jewish hospital in New York’s Lower East Side.
The doctor on the ward is intrigued by his decision. “What was wrong with Massachusetts General? Was it the doctors? Didn’t they find out what was wrong with you?”
“The doctors,” replied Finkelstein, “were outstanding. Geniuses! I can’t complain.”
“Was it the nurses? Weren’t they attentive enough? Were they distant, cold?”
“The nurses were angels. No, I can’t complain.”
“So was it the food? Too little? Too boring? It must have been the food, yes?”
“The meals were wonderful. 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 to come here?”
Finkelstein gives a big smile and says, “Because here—here I can complain!”
Although we might know people like Finkelstein, it turns out that our tradition does not celebrate this attitude. Tolstoy may think that happiness is boring, but Judasim does not. In fact, happiness is a commandment.
A few weeks ago we read in our Torah portion, Ki Tavo, about a relatively dated ritual. In that portion, we were commanded to take the first fruits of our yearly harvest to the Temple as a thanksgiving offering to God. During the brief description of this ritual we received one of the most powerful commandments in the Torah: “You shall be happy with all the good that Adonai, your G-d, gave you and your household” (Dt. 26:11). This command is very different than Tolstoy’s observation. We are not to dismiss happiness but to seek it out. Happiness is a central precept in our tradition. We aren’t commanded to yearn for more. We shouldn’t agonize over what we don’t have. We are to rejoice and be thankful. Yes, there are those who don’t have much in life and have much to be upset about, and for those people we should be there to help them in their time of need. However, even they should push themselves to find something in their lot to be happy about.
Alone, this commandment would be enough. However, the authors of our Torah ingeniously return to the concept of happiness at the end of the portion. After commanding us to bring our first fruits, the Torah includes a litany of blessings and curses that might befall the Jewish people. At the end of the section of curses, Moses interjects with an explanation for why Israel might be deserving this punishment:
“And all these curses shall come upon you, and shall pursue you, and overtake you, till you be destroyed…because you did not serve the Adonai your God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, because of the abundance around you” (Dt. 28:45-47)
What is downfall according to this text? It is failing to pursue happiness. It is avoiding joy when there is reason to celebrate. It is this stain of thought found both at the start and the end of our portion that led Rabbi Nachman of Bretzlav in the late 18th Century to write his famous phrase "Mitzvah Gedolah Le'hiyot Besimcha Tamid," it is a great commandment to always be in a state of happiness. It is also the impetus for the chilling teaching in the Jerusalem Talmud “Every man must render an account before God of all good things he beheld and did not enjoy" (Jer. Talmud, Kiddushin, end).
Besides the fact that happiness is a commandment there are of course other reasons why we should be happy.
I don’t need to tell you that happiness comes with a number of benefits. Look in the New York Times Archives over the past few years and you’ll see countless articles showing that happy people live longer, are more productive, have lower blood pressure, and maintain stronger and more intimate relationships.
However, there are also a number of religious or spiritual reasons to pursue happiness. I’ll touch briefly on one.
Contrary to what you might think seeking happiness is actually the ultimate form of humility. Maimonides, Judaism’s most famous legal thinker was the first person to say this directly. Maimonides explains that if we look around us there is so much to be happy about. We might find love. We might find connection. Maybe security. Maybe piece of mind. Each one of these is a blessing. Each one of these comes from another source. For Maimonides this source was God. To ignore God’s blessings and be miserable is to say that you can be a better God than God. Misery leads to an inflated sense of self. Happiness, on the other hand, means that you understand that you live in an imperfect world, but are willing to make the effort to find the beauty and wonder in that world.
However, we don’t need to stop with God. To be miserable about your friendships might mean that you think that you are a better friend than all of your friends. To be miserable about your family means that you feel you could be a better mother, father, sister, or husband than they are. Only when we realize that people are not perfect are we open enough to see the blessings they bring to ours life and to rejoice in them.
If we think of humility in terms of size the metaphor takes on a whole new meaning. We all know people whose personalities are so big that they don’t leave space for others in the room. Most of those people I know are big because of the negative energy they bring with them. The air is saturated with something thick and depressing when they are near. If being miserable makes you big, then being happy (and humble) makes you smaller. And as we become happier and smaller we create a vacuum. And what gets pulled inside? When we are happy, the blessings of our friends, family, and community, fill the empty space of our misery. By noticing the blessings around us and making ourselves smaller, we are in a position to encounter and notice other blessings in our lives. It is a cycle that leads to good. Happiness brings more happiness into our lives.
This idea also works with our relationship with God, however you envision that relationship. If we can become smaller in our happiness, it leaves us with enough space to find God amid the tumult of our lives. This might be why the Jerusalem Talmud teaches, “God’s holy spirit only infuses those that are happy” (Suk 5:1). Only those who are willing to shrink themselves down through happiness have the space and freedom to recognize the God moments in our lives.
Happiness then is a life where we recognize blessing and have the space to encounter God and others on a deeper and more powerful level. How could Tolstoy have ever call this boring!
I want to conclude with an image of what a life of happiness looks like in practice. Each day during the month of Elul and the High Holy Days we are supposed to sing Psalm 27. Its key line includes an image of a life fulfilled, a life to strive for. What is that image?
Achat Shaalti meit adonai: Only one thing I ask from God
Shivti B’veit Adonai Kol Yamei Chayi: Just to sit, in simple happiness, and gaze upon the face of God.
Our Psalm doesn’t ask for complicated romances, extra work, praise from our distant bosses, or the thrill of gambling with one’s emotions. It asks for one simple thing: to sit in joy and humility and find the beauty in God’s house and God’s face.
So I invite you now to join with us for the second time tonight as we ask God, not for Tolstoy’s uniqueness of misery, but for the magnificence of joy and the intricacies of life.
Achat Shaalit, pg. 5…
