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Accentuate the Positive
by Velvel "Wally" Spiegler

In every life circumstance there are at least two choices: the joyous, the positive one which emanates from spirit; and its serious counterpart that derives from the intellect. Our culture has an affinity for the serious. Take for example our health care system, which might alternatively be called an illness care system, which concerns itself with disease, with pain and suffering, not health.

Psychology and psychiatry are sciences of emotional and mental disorders; they study misery and torment. Psychotherapy requires long years of dredging up old repressed feelings with lots of pain attached. Business organizations, schools, governments, even synagogues have their serious edge devoid of humor and playfulness. We're even too serious at play. I actually knew people who became depressed when the Red Sox lost the World Series, a few years ago. We are more concerned with what's wrong rather than what's right. We need to lighten up. The alternative to all this gloominess is through its antidote, joyousness.  Judaism looks towards the healthy side of life, at celebration, joy and delight. Jewish tradition is a viable choice to accentuate the positive.
 
Could you imagine what would happen if only happy people were studied? What would it teach us about regaining our health and vitality? Can you picture yourself in a gathering where people smile and laugh a lot, tell humorous and happy stories? How would their presence affect you? Here's how Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, an 18th Century hasidic master, describes it, "for there are people who suffer and they walk around full of suffering and worry. When someone approaches them with a happy face, he is able to give them renewed life. To do this is not some empty matter, but an exceedingly great thing".

Joy, the most dynamic of the positive attributes, emanates from the supernal realm, the spiritual-self. Joy is healing. Joy is the natural condition of a human being relating to the Creator of the universe; it runs deeper than pleasure. Feelings, that are anything less than joyous, are impaired by fear in one of its endless facades-anger, anxiety, worry, depression, low self-esteem and so on. This is not to deny life's difficulties, the tears and the disappointments, but rather to accept that life is an ongoing series of ups and downs. As we mature spiritually, we learn to embrace the highs as well as the lows and recognize the joy of life under any conditions.

Martin Buber elaborates, in his "Tales of the Hasidim", that the core of hasidic teachings is the concept of a life of fervor, of exalted joy. This is not an empty idea or a theory but rather the achievement of lives that were actually lived by the tzaddikim (the spiritual masters) and their hasidim (the pious followers). The ordinary Jew, of years ago and like us today, was incapable of attaining this life of spirited joy through his own efforts.  He needed a helper, a guide, a teacher and that was the tzaddik. It wasn't his intellectual instruction of Torah, but rather his physical nearness, his presence that made him so effective in healing the ailing body and the ailing soul. We are not so privileged today to have the support of a tzaddik, but we can feel their presence at our sides through the writings of authors like Martin Buber, Elie Weisel, and Barry Holtz.

We commemorate the joy of life with our Jewish rituals and life cycle events: welcoming newborns, bar/bat mitzvot and certainly at Jewish weddings. Shabbat is called a delight. The prayer book instructs us to "remember" (Exod. 20:8 ) and to "keep" Deut. 5:12) the Sabbath, and we are further directed to "honor and rejoice" in it (Isaiah 58:13). We rejoice at Simchat Torah, the three Festivals: Succot, the joy of the harvest; Pesach, the joy of redemption;  and Shavuot, the joy of receiving the Torah. At Purim, we really let our hair down and have fun. Simcha, the Hebrew word for joy expresses the visions and the aspirations of the Jewish people. The word is liberally sprinkled throughout all of Jewish literature, as in "only joy and love shall follow me all the days of my life--the twenty third Psalm.
These days, I find the time spent with my grandchildren--time that perhaps I couldn't spend with my own children-- a source of both joy and spiritual development. We sing, we tell stories, we fool around and laugh to a point where I vividly recall the joy of being a child once more. We need to let loose more. We need to become more like children: roll in the grass, make ridiculous faces, kick a ball just for the fun of it. The Maggid of Mezritch, another hasidic sage, had this to say about children, "from the child you can learn three things: when he needs something he demands it vigorously; he is never idle for a moment;  he is joyous for no particular reason"