We don’t mix two joys together
So goes the Jewish legal principle for why one should not have a wedding during the intermediate days of the holidays. Want to get married during the upcoming holiday of Sukkot? Better think twice about that. Planning a wedding during Passover? In addition to the food headache, the legal texts would advise you not to, as we don’t mix one joy with another.
I’ve often found the thinking behind this wise. After all, we know the feeling of being so caught up in the joy of one moment that it overwhelms and diminishes another joy that might arise. Joy is so precious these days that the notion of focusing on one in one moment and giving the other joy its own moment feels useful.
But what happens when you don’t have that option? Many of us face a challenge this week with the meeting of October 7th and all of its accompanying trauma and the holiday of Sukkot, a holiday so strongly associated with joy that the emotion is demanded in the Torah and its most noteworthy song is simply:
v’samahta be’hagekha-be happy in your holiday
Personally speaking, I have another conflict with the day as my wedding anniversary is October 7th. For all of us, that’s one joy and one sorrow and for me (and Lauren), that’s two joys and one sorrow. What, I might ask our sages and their non-mixing joy principle, would they say about that complex algorithm of 2 (joy) + sorrow=? Mixed emotion doesn’t even quite capture it.
Sukkot as a joyous holiday is not without its nods to complexity. After all, the notion of sitting in a fragile structure, vulnerable to the elements is meant to inculcate within us an acknowledgement of gratitude amid our frailty. We shake leaves that fall by the wayside. We hold an etrog, whose very kosher status could be rendered unfit if its flimsy tip breaks off. Then to top it off, many people read Ecclesiastes, a book that is replete with themes of mortality, futility, and purpose.
It’s in that book that I found myself drawn to a verse that I think connects to our joy and sorrow equation. In chapter 3:11, we read:
אֶת־הַכֹּ֥ל עָשָׂ֖ה יָפֶ֣ה בְעִתּ֑וֹ גַּ֤ם אֶת־הָעֹלָם֙ נָתַ֣ן בְּלִבָּ֔ם מִבְּלִ֞י אֲשֶׁ֧ר לֹא־יִמְצָ֣א הָאָדָ֗ם אֶת־הַֽמַּעֲשֶׂ֛ה אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים מֵרֹ֥אשׁ וְעַד־סֽוֹף׃
God brings everything to pass precisely at its time; God also puts eternity in their mind, but without a person ever guessing, from the beginning to the end all the things that God brings to pass.
There is a lot to unpack about this verse that we’re not going to get into, specifically the notion of God putting things into our life at the right time, whatever that means. It is perhaps one of my top 5 theological pet peeves. But I digress. What is germane to our conversation is the notion of human beings possessing immense amounts of knowledge, except for an understanding of the timing of our own death.
The Midrash Tanhuma, a collection of teachings that interprets texts from the Tanakh wonders why that is:
(Lev. 19:23:) “When you come into the land and plant.” The Holy One said to Israel, Even though you find it (i.e., the land) full of all bounty, you shall not say, ‘Let us settle down and not plant.’ Rather, be careful in planting, as stated (ibid., cont.), ‘and plant any tree for food.’
Just as you came in and found plantings which others had planted, so you shall plant for your children, lest someone say, ‘Since I am old and tomorrow I shall die, why should I toil for others.’” Solomon said (in Eccl. 3:11), “God has made everything beautiful in its time; God also has put eternity into their heart.”
Hidden (’lm)” is what is written (without the w of the normal spelling, i.e., ‘wlm, eternity). Why? If the Holy One, had not hidden (rt.: ‘lm) the day of [one’s] death from people, a person would neither build nor plant; for he would have said, “Tomorrow I shall die. Why should I persist in toiling for the sake of others?” The Holy One therefore, hid death from (rt.: ‘lm) human hearts, so that one would build and plant.
Quoting from an earlier source from the Torah about the requirement to build and plant for the future, the Midrash links to this verse from Ecclesiastes. In specific it notes that the word translated for ‘eternity/world’ can also mean concealment/mystery. So it wonders, why would God conceal our very death from our hearts? Because, it answers, if humans knew about the exact timing of our demise, we may refrain from ever participating in anything constructive.
While perhaps a bit nihilistic, it does feel somewhat accurate. Many of us know the feeling, when faced with immense sadness and destruction as we relive the horrors of October 7th, grapple with the immense loss of innocent lives in Gaza, and deal with our own unstable democracy here in America, to want to hunker down and just focus on ourselves. This Midrash, using this verse, nudges us to do something different.
The mystery of the world isn’t meant to shut us down but rather to open us up. As Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, dean of Hebrew College writes:
In the face of the uncertainty of our lives, Sukkot reminds us that this is our purpose for as long as we are here: To build and to plant. To live and to give life, as joyfully, bravely, and generously as we can.
This time of year when we put ourselves in the elements of nature, open to its whims, we courageously put ourselves out ‘there,’ into the muck, mire, and chaos of it all. Instead of secluding, we remain open. As we think about these upcoming days of heaviness and joy, it’s a useful reminder, but there’s one other piece I want to bring to this complicated equation.
One of the early (3rd generation) masters of the hasidic tradition, the Noam Elimelech of Lizhensk (18th century Poland) saw the same linguistic connection between the Hebrew word (olam) for eternity and concealment/mystery. From there, he drew another connection a very popular phrase from Psalms 89:
Olam hesed yibaneh-The world will be built through kindness
As you can see, that same word, olam-world/myster/concealment, appears. Here is his interpretation:
We all live in this world of concealment. Our job as humans is to confront that world with our unique tools. One of those very tools we have is hesed-kindness because we know the world is built with kindness. Those acts of kindness not only build up the world (yibaneh) but they also give us wisdom (binah) to deal with this concealment.
The Noam Elimelech adds two powerful elements here. First, he says, when confronted with this painful and mysterious world, we need to bring more kindness into it. Because when we do that, not only does it build the world back up, but it also gives us wisdom. He gets there from another fun wordplay between the word for built up, which in Hebrew is yibaneh (יבנה) to the word for wisdom which is just those letters rearranged in Hebrew binah (בינה).
It’s a bit fanciful but quite beautiful. This wisdom, he argues, isn’t a wisdom that things will all turn out perfect but rather an assuredness that we can do something about this world around us. The science seems to back this up. The areas of our brain that we need for quick responses don’t do well with mixed emotions. But the deeper parts of our brains, the ones that help us process conflict and uncertainty and are important for self-regulation and complex thinking, do help us deal with the mixed emotions of the world.
So here we find ourselves, yet again, facing a real mixed bag of a week. And it turns out, our brains are made to hold on to this. We are meant to come together in joy while facing a shaky and painful reality that wounds us unrelentingly. On top of that, I am grappling with what it means to experience all of this while celebrating one of the happiest days of my life. So what does our tradition ask of us?
Go out into the world, hold it all in one basket, and deal with the concealment of the world by giving of yourself to it through kindness. It may not be wise to mix joy and joy but when we mix joy+joy+sorrow, there may be real potential to build our world up.
Sending wishes for a joyous holiday of Sukkot, some welcome peace, and a week of quiet.