Don’t Worry, It’s Adar!
Adar is here! Actually, if we’re gonna get technical, Adar I is here as we are in a Jewish leap year so this means we actually get two Adars this year and since Adar is the month of joy, well, double the Adar, double the joy. As the Talmud notes that “when Adar enters, joy increases”. How exciting! Joy is here!
But maybe you’re not feeling all the joy right now (but maybe you are? I hope?). It’s understandable that you might not automatically feel joy just because the Jewish calendar told you so. I mean, we’re entering the 3rd calendar year of the COVID pandemic, antisemitism is on the rise, people seem to be having more and more difficulty just being kind to each other, and science tells us our planet is burning up so, sure, joy might be difficult to locate these days. But consider this:
I was sitting on a zoom for the monthly Rosh Chodesh women’s group I’m in and the topic we were discussing was, of course, joy. The text we were grappling with was the following passage from Likutei Moharan, the magnum opus from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, founder of the Breslov Chasidic movement:
Likutei Moharan, Part II 24:1:1
(1) It is a great mitzvah to always be happy, and to make every effort to determinedly keep depression and gloom at bay
When I first read this I thought, “Oh no. Here we go again. Toxic positivity shows up even in the Chasidic movement”. I asked the rest of the women in the group what they thought when they first read this passage and it seemed we all had the same reaction. “Always be happy? How? What about all the other feelings?” But where was this reaction coming from? Had we all reached a level of pessimism that we can’t even read a sentiment so beautiful without automatically rejecting it? What’s going on here? (we had lots of questions).
When we got down into we walked away with a few thoughts:
The “influencer” world found uplifted by Instagram and TikTok has created a saturation of people trying to market themselves as a #blessed mental health experts complete with posts telling us to “choose happiness” or that depression can be cured by a daily practice of gratitude and yoga. Since we know that mental health is a lot more complicated and nuanced than an instagram post can allow for, we’ve gotten tired of pseudo celebrities (and real celebrities) trying to sell us ‘wellness’ through toxic positivity.
Context is a beautiful thing – what is happiness to one person may not be for another. As a society, we tend to dive into our search for ‘happiness’ with this sense of it being a universal thing we can have rather than what it truly might be — a moving target or organic, living feeling that changes depending upon the person, time, and experience.
Finally, Rabbi Nachman was a huge proponent of expressing happiness during prayer, going so far as to suggest clapping and dancing during or after prayers to inspire a joyous personal relationship with God. However, it's also widely understood that Rabbi Nachman suffered with extensive periods of deep sadness, giving context to the fact that humans are deeply complicated and alleviating us from the myth that constant happiness is ever to be a thing.
However you find your own joy, I hope you find moments of it this month and next. Whether it’s in the form of that first sip of coffee in the morning, finishing a project, or finding time to take a walk – moments of joy can be found, it just might take a moment to recognize it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Whitney
