Chaye Sarah 5785- Joy and Sorrow
At Shabbat dinner last week, one of the other guests asked the host, a therapist, “How do we hold joy and sorrow at the same time?”
His response was we’re good at compartmentalizing. But I’ve been mulling over this question for several days, because it’s something that has been on my mind since October 9, 2023, when we celebrated a wedding for one of my daughters in the shadow of the horrors of October 7. And for much of the last year I’ve felt like my life personally is wonderful and filled with joy, yet the countries I love, Israel and America, are both struggling in dark times, one needless to say more challenging than the other. A war that’s lasted over a year, soldiers and innocent civilians on both sides dying every day, a government that seems focused on its own survival more than anything else, and in America Trump’s victory and all that means for America and the world. It’s a tough time.
We have many sources that speak to joy and sorrow as a sequential kind of thing, either/or. We see that in this week’s Torah portion which opens with Abraham’s sorrow at the death of his wife Sarah, but it is quickly followed by the joy of a wedding for his son Isaac. Psalm 126 teaches that “those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” We have similar themes throughout our liturgy, as in Lecha Dodi where we sing, “You have long sat in the valley of tears, He will have compassion on you.”
I was also thinking about this tension between joy and sorrow at services on Saturday morning. In the synagogue I attend in Jerusalem we read all the names of the hostages every Shabbat. Which can be a heartbreaking moment, to think of all of those people still at the hands of Hamas a year later. Yet a few moments later, we sang yasis alayich Elohayich, “May God rejoice over you as the groom rejoices over the bride,” as we celebrated an impending wedding. It’s kind of whiplash.
We sometimes think as joy and sorrow as opposite ends of a spectrum. We feel one or the other. But I don’t think they are on one spectrum at all. I think they are separate buckets. Most of the time, one bucket is much fuller than the other, and the predominant thing we feel in a moment is either joy or sorrow. But there are times when both buckets are empty – and we don’t feel much of anything, we’re just getting by. And there are other times when both buckets are full, and it can feel confusing holding both at the same time.
I was discussing this idea with an artistic friend of mine who wanted to think about how it plays out in color. If you have joy and sorrow at the same time, it’s not like you take two vibrant colors and mix them together into a monotonous gray. Both the bright colors and the dark colors can exist side by side on the same canvas, or on the same object.
For example, my mother passed away some time ago, now 14 years ago. When we have a family celebration, I think of her, and her not being there. It doesn’t detract from the joy of the simcha. It adds another layer.
The poet Khalil Gibran wrote a poem called “Joy and Sorrow.” In it he says,
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Life contains both joy and sorrow. They are inseparable. And we can, and do, feel both at the same time. May you be blessed with a life where your joy bucket stays fuller than your sorrow bucket.
