The Joy In The Breaking

When Adar Comes

We moved! Yay! Well, bittersweet actually but that’ll be for another post. This one is about broken things, a concept with which anyone who has ever moved is well acquainted. We happened to have contracted with a particularly inept moving company (steer clear of 51 States Relocation if you prefer to live your life without being gaslit at every turn), so there were a few more broken things than expected.

Moving is very rarely a joyful process and especially in this case, given the unique approach to this company’s customer service approach, there really was no joy in Mudville. As we were unpacking though, there were a few moments of joy that did come from putting things that had been broken apart, back together. Seeing something in its disparate parts come together is a unique feeling. It’s as if you’re recreating space and time, as memories and anecdotes related to that object come flooding back through your memory.

Coincidentally, our move in happened just before the arrival of the Hebrew month of Adar, the month in which the holiday of Purim falls, and the month which is most strongly associated with joy. One of Purim’s most well known songs, based on a discussion in the Talmud goes like this:

When Adar comes in, joy increases.

Discussions abound about whether this is prescriptive and thereby a positive mitzvah-commandment; do this thing. Or, whether it’s a statement about the inherent power of the month. It’s the former viewpoint that shapes the following beautiful teaching from the Kedushat Levi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev:

¹ The essence of this joy is the raising up of the sparks to their particular form of service of God, for these sparks were created for humankind. When we elevate them, it’s as if we’re properly garbing them and in doing so, we create joy.

For the Kedushat Levi, the joy is prescriptive but it doesn’t happen simply by being happy. It comes from the ‘raising of the sparks.’ Now you’re wondering, what in the world does that mean?

Here’s a speed run through the mystical movement that helps unpack it. The world was created through primordial light being channeled through vessels. Good, right? Wrong. The problem was the vessels couldn’t really contain the light so they shattered. In that shattering, these divine sparks-nitzotzot fell and scattered into every aspect of our world: people, places, things, etc. Our task, should we choose to accept it, is to gather and elevate those sparks. According to the Kedushat Levi, there is a special cosmic alignment that coincides with this month of Adar that pushes us to work even harder in this spark gathering.

What does gathering those sparks look like? Rav Kook has a penetrating answer:

When we find the kernel of good inside the depths of evil and grasp it, polish it, and expand it, and find that which must be taken from it and put into practice, this is how the sparks rise to their holy place.

So, in essence, when we can mine goodness from not-such-good places, we elevate those sparks. Or, in other words, take broken pieces and put them back together. Humans love to do this. I know this as a result of a move from one home to the other but I also think it speaks to a deeper human instinct.

Take, for example, the Repair Cafe movement. In 2009, a Dutch environmental journalist, seeing the immense amounts of broken appliances scattered about, arranged a local event where volunteers skilled in repairs would try to fix broken devices that community members brought in, free of cost. She had no idea if anyone would show up.

Lo and behold, people streamed in. The beautiful part about it was that it brought people together across vast lines of distance: geographic, racial, and socioeconomic. People loved helping by putting stuff back together. Today, the Repair Café movement has spread to more than 40 countries across six continents, with nearly 3,200 Repair Cafés in operation, including 200-plus community repair programs in the United States. Moreover, the Repair Café Foundation, which Ms. Postma set up in 2010, has helped foster legislative changes to make repairing more accessible in Europe.

Pretty powerful, huh? It speaks to something about the human psyche. We are created flawed and with brokenness inside of us. Perhaps it’s that realization that spurs us to want to help broken things get put back together, hoping that it will allow our broken parts to find healing.

So now that we’re in Adar, I hope that we each can find that joy. It’s not a joy that comes from material gains (although those are nice too), nor is it a joy that comes from being done with an absolutely incompetent moving company; it’s a joy of what it means to be human. When Adar comes in, joy increases…because we have the power within us to mend broken things.

Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov (happy new month), and Happy Weekend!

1. Homily for Purim 13