Dance of Joy Amid Sorrow

Give, give, and give again

From 2004-2016, I was in Israel every year for relatively substantial periods of time. The thing about going through those experiences over and over means there’s a general loss of the initial spark as time goes along. It’s not isolated to just Israel. Think about your physical wellness journey. You’ve joined a gym, felt the initial rush of endorphins, and then a few weeks in, you’re right back on the couch. Or maybe you’ve started a new reading habit, dutifully reading every night until a few days later when you find yourself scrolling on TikTok before bed once again.

In my Israel journey, it wasn’t so much that I stopped wanting to come but just that I found myself jaded and a bit cynical about my experiences. The places and experiences that once brought me joy had lost their luster. Once October 7th occurred, I found that fire reawakened. Having been primarily in more progressive and liberal spaces over the years and feeling at home in them, I was a bit adrift after those events. Extremists became even more entrenched and like so many areas of my life, I was left wondering who are my people?

Pairing that with a general sense of worry about the Jewish people in the states, specifically in my little bubble of progressive Judaism left me unsure about a path forward. Over the last few days, I have felt a sense of reactivation, as I write this to you three days into a work experience in Israel.

As many of you know, I pivoted from pulpit work into an organization called Repair the World last summer, where I now serve as the Senior Director of Jewish Education. Our work centers around building a Jewish service movement that integrates robust Jewish education, service, values, and social change. My role there is to help ensure that our educational models are authentic, grounded, and resonant in a modern setting. This trip to Israel is to work with our partners stateside and in Israel to build bridges between the service movements in the states and Israel.

The overall feeling in Israel is still one in which the effects of October 7th are palpable. People are certainly living their lives but it is always through the lens of October 7th. It’s like walking through the world in a split screen. On one side, you have people playing volleyball and laughing on the beach while the fences around the beach are plastered with posters of remaining hostages. The roads are filled with people driving to work continuing the every day nature of life while graffiti on the highways assail Bibi Netanyahu and the current government for their various missteps. Then, there’s the sadness. It’s an undercurrent but it thrums with intensity.

So many people wear yellow pins and dog tags to remember the hostages. Every lecture is always ended with some version of “may the hostages return soon.” And of course, the righteous indignation and pain fuel the hundreds of thousands of people protesting the government’s inaction. I wondered on my first day here, how do people do it? How do they live as if life is routine while knowing full well that it’s not?

While here, we’ve been serving in various settings. We volunteered at a center for at risk youth and their parents where both parties receive therapy and assistance to better their lives at home. We went to a home for the elderly where we built benches from scratch. And then finally and most powerfully, we served with an organization called SAHI (a Hebrew acronym that translates to special kindness unit) that devotes itself to engaging thousands of at-risk Israeli youth in various acts of giving. Our particular work with them was packing boxes of food and products for the upcoming holiday of Pesach.

One of their many mottos which they sang, chanted, and danced to continuously throughout the night was:

The greatest thing in the world is doing good

A simple and potentially cliche expression that is a foundational aspect of the lives of the hundreds of people that we saw. They live it and believe in it. As their founder told us, one of their major missions is to let these young folks know that no matter how on the periphery they are, no matter how vulnerable society makes them feel, they matter because they can do good.

When the packing was over, an impromptu dance party broke out and I was struck by the power of their joy seen below:

In addition to the happiness that jumps off the screen, you will notice that one of the young folks is draped in an Israeli flag with the image of an Israeli solder killed in the war in Gaza. I was struck by the dichotomy of that moment. There’s great pride in Israel in general for service in the army but especially in the Ethiopian community and in SAHI, that pride is amplified. The legacy of this young man, an alum of the program who was killed, paired alongside the unbridled joy at serving was so powerful.

Those two feelings, often at odds with one another, can actually live together. The way we can dance with them is reflected beautifully by the chasidic master, Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev¹

There are two kinds of sorrow and two kinds of joy. When a person broods over his misfortunes, when he cowers in a corner and despairs of help – that is a bad kind of sorrow, concerning which it is said, ‘The Shechinah [Divine Presence] does not dwell in a place of dejection.’ The other kind [of sorrow] is the honest grief of a man who knows what he lacks. The same is true for joy. One who is devoid of inner substance and, in the midst of empty pleasures, neither feels that, nor tries to fill his lack, is a fool. [In contrast,] one who is truly joyful is like a man whose house has burned down, who feels his need deep in his soul and begins to build anew. Over every stone that is laid, his heart rejoices.”

Reb Levi Yitzchak says you can walk through the world in sorrow and joy in two ways. One form of sorrow involves a total despair while the other is paired with an awareness of what one is lacking so that the lack might one day be filled.

Similarly, there is a form of joy that is purely surface level and materialistic that does not have staying power. The more enhanced form of joy is actually described by its counterweight. Namely, this joy lives in a place where, when faced with the inevitable sadnesses in life, it doesn’t allow the despair to consume the person but actually uses the sorrow as fuel to rebuild.

That is the essence of what I saw this week in Israel. So much of it was activated by people who are faced with tectonic events of upheaval and sadness. Their response to it is to give of themselves: in time, energy, and practical resources. The power behind that is that it gives them a sense of purpose in these moments.

Brokenness is a feature of our existence, not a bug. We all feel it in different ways and sometimes it’s felt so acutely that it’s hard to persist. Yet, what I have learned this week in Israel is that one has to push agains that sadness, jadedness, and cynicism. That doesn’t happen by ignoring or sticking our heads in the sand, but by remembering that the greatest thing in the world is to do good, wherever, whenever, and however.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend!

1. Martin Buber in Tales of Hasidism, p.231