The Gentle Cynic

This evening marks the 200th Yahrzeit of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav – the man whom Martin Buber called the last Jewish Mystic. Great-grandson to the saintly founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, Rebbe Nachman communicated his mystical wisdom to his disciples by means of symbolic tales. You may recall that just last week, I shared one of his best-known stories, the tale of the Turkey Prince. Rav Nachman’s influence continues to grow. We see it in rabbis’ sermons, in the world of scholarship, in new translations of his writings, and – as you’ve seen if you’ve been in Israel lately – in an increasing number of his followers dancing in front of Rebbe Nachman-mobiles blasting music, wearing white crocheted yarmulkes with the Hebrew Letters, Na, Nach, Nachma, Nachman. Rebbe Nachman’s legacy is all the more remarkable given the short and tragic nature of his life. He died at 38, shortly after his wife, having suffered from tuberculosis for several years. In his lifetime he buried four children. Rebbe Nachman was a man who knew great sorrow. His life makes it even more noteworthy that his most identifiable teaching is none other than the mitzvah of being happy, the commandment to be joyful. Mitzvah gedolah le'hiyot b’simhah tamid, it is a great commandment to always be happy. An amazing and at first blush, not un-problematic teaching. Not only is happiness praiseworthy, not only is happiness something that can be commanded, but happiness must be, according to Rebbe Nachman, a constant feature of our spiritual posture.

Happiness is taking a beating lately. I recently read Barbara Ehrenreich’s newest book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. Ehrenreich takes America to task for having succumbed to a cult of positivity. Beginning with her own journey as a cancer patient, when she was told to look at her illness as an opportunity, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of positive thinking. From Joel Osteen and other self-help mega-church gurus; to the best selling book, The Secret, which counsels mental magic in order to achieve desired outcomes; to motivational coaches, America suffers from a corrosive and dangerous condition of rosy affirmation. In fact, Ehrenreich claims it is this very irrational exuberance built into the DNA of our country that is the source of the economic collapse of 2008. It was our self-delusional inability to be anything but positive which clouded our vision as we continued to seek happiness, refusing to consider the negatives that would lead to our economic woes.

While Ehrenreich does not cite Rebbe Nachman, I suspect that if she did, she would not do so approvingly. To be commanded to be happy, always? It is exactly this kind of positivity that is the problem. In fact, I imagine, Ehrenreich would have some problems with the festival of Sukkot altogether. On this festival, and only on this festival, we are commanded to be happy – not just happy, but as the text in Deuteronomy explains, ach sameach, exclusively happy. The midrash explains that what makes Sukkot unique is that most other holidays commemorate a victory of some sort: Passover, over the Egyptians; Purim, over Haman; Hanukkah, over the Greeks. While we are grateful on each of those occasions and as such, rejoice, they also bear a tinge of sadness. We know that our victory came by way of the fall of our enemies, also God’s creatures. But Sukkot is different! When we sit in Sukkot, we recall God’s protective embrace through our wilderness wanderings. The celebration comes with no collateral damage. We can be, we must be, we are commanded to be altogether joyful. The whole point is our religious duty to be positive.

Here is my question. Given the alternatives of Rebbe Nachman and Ehrenreich, which do we choose? The ethical tractate Avot de-Rabbi Nathan gives a list of 10 different types of simha – ten kinds of joy – covering the full range of psychological states. On this festival of Sukkot, how can we be happy, without falling prey to the delusions that an ignorant bliss brings?

I think the answer, or at least part of the answer, involves looking at the primary text of the holiday, the book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes. Tradition suggests that Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon in his old age. Having written the Song of Songs as a lust-filled youth and the book of Proverbs in his studied middle age, in his final years, deeply aware of his own mortality, Solomon produced Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities – all is vanity.” Ecclesiastes tells of the search for wisdom, for riches and power, and yet no matter what we accumulate, the same fate awaits us all. “The Race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the valiant, nor is the bread won by the wise, nor wealth by the intelligent, nor favor by the learned– for time and chance come to all.” (9:11). Many have observed that the book of Ecclesiastes is even more troubling than the book of Job, the story of a man who came to know great suffering, but in spite of the his doubts, affirmed his faith. Not so with Ecclesiastes, who harbored all the same doubts as Job, but offers no assurances that the just will be rewarded or the wicked punished. In reading Ecclesiastes, one is reminded of Rabelais’ supposed deathbed utterance “I am going to see a Great Perhaps.” Nothing is assured, neither in this life, nor in the next. Our achievements – fleeting. The record of our existence – gone after a generation or two.

Which is why, I think the key to understanding Kohelet as a happy book, worthy of this festival of Sukkot, lies in Chapter 9:7-10. Because in spite of every claim of Ecclesiastes, or rather precisely because of all these claims, at the end of the day, I do believe Ecclesiastes is a book that bears a message of uplift. Listen to the words:
Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy; for your action was long ago approved by God. Let your clothes always be freshly washed, and your head never lack ointment. Enjoy happiness with a woman you love all the fleeting days of life that have been granted to you under the sun—all your fleeting days. For that alone is what you can get out of life and out of the means you acquire under the sun. Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might. For there is no action, no reasoning, no learning, no wisdom in Sheol, where you are going.

Given the unacceptable option of resigning oneself to one’s mortality and living in stoic suffering, or shifting to some sort of mindless pleasure-seeking hedonism, Kohelet picks a third path. The great scholar Morris Jastrow dubbed Kohelet “The Gentle Cynic.” We are, undoubtedly, in a world beyond our control, and much of what does happen may give us cause for a fatalistic outlook. Philosophical arguments do not change facts nor do they mitigate the injustices of the world. And yet Ecclesiastes counsels an ironic alternative. As Heschel once described himself: “I am an optimist against my better judgment.” Ecclesiastes tell us to eat our bread in happiness and with a merry heart, surround ourselves with relationships that really matter and, most importantly, do whatever is in your power to do. In a topsy-turvy world we are still commanded to what is within our reach. You may have seen the recent documentary on a Sir Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker who, while living in pre-war Europe, was made aware of the impending horrors of Nazi Germany. He went on to save 669 children – a righteous gentile. An altogether unassuming individual (he actually never told anyone until his wife found out decades later), he was asked why he did it. He replied that every human being is inevitably faced with situations beyond one’s control. And yet, there is always something you can do, and it is incumbent upon us to do that which we can. The sufferings, the struggles and anxieties of humanity are unavoidable; but they cannot immobilize us, emotionally or physically.

We need to remember that Sukkot was originally an agricultural holiday. It was a time of intense worry and anxiety for the ancient Israelite. Would the rains come, would the harvest be plentiful? These questions were real then, they are real now. Ehrenreich is right in pointing out the folly of acting as if such concerns do not exist. But in facing our world with eyes wide open, we can still find purposeful and even happy lives – what the psychologist of religion, William James described as the religion of the “Healthy Minded.” Rabbi Mordechai Joseph Leiner, the Isbitzer Rebbe, explained that we read Ecclesisastes on Sukkot, not because it trivializes our anxieties or teaches to focus only on pleasure, but rather because it provides us with the language by which we can learn to appreciate those things in life that truly matter, that truly bring happiness – the companionship of loved ones, the joy of reaping the fruits of our labors. These are the things that really matter.

This past Sunday, right after Yom Kippur, I was exhausted beyond words from the High Holy Days; I hadn’t seen my kids for weeks. We took the train downtown and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and back on a beautiful fall day. They probably only remember the ice cream they got, but I could feel, holding their palms in mine, the energy flowing back into me. It was a walk I did not want to end, a walk already eclipsed by a million worries, a walk that nobody will ever be able to take away from me. This is the message of Ecclesiastes, this is the joy of Sukkot – a gentle cynicism: deeply aware of the narrow bridge we tread, yet moving forward with a quiet, grateful, graceful and purposeful optimism all the same.

My favorite teaching of Rabbi Nachman has to do with the nature of happiness – specifically, dancing. I share it with you on this, his 200th Yahrzeit, on this festival of Sukkot:
At times, when people are joyful and dance, they will seize one who sits apart in his sorrow. They drag him into their dancing round and compel him to be happy with them. This is also what happens in the heart of a person who is joyful: Sadness and sorrow withdraw on the sidelines, but it is reckoned as a special virtue to round them up boldly and to bring sadness along into joy, so that all the power of sorrow be changed to joy. (LM II 23).

Rebbe Nachman knew what Kohelet knew thousands of years before; what each of us knows here today. There is no person who does not come to know sorrow, who does not know that for all our ambitions, one fate awaits us all. And yet even so, “It is a great mitzvah to be happy always.” Mitzvah gedolah le'hiyot b’simha tamid. We are commanded to be happy, to approach life with a gentle cynicism, embracing our mortality but not letting it overwhelm us – acknowledging both sorrow and joy, bringing both into the dance of life.