Simchat Torah
Four Types of Joy
Simhat Torah is coming, and inspires some thoughts about the word simchah, שמחה, joy. I think that, in general, Judaism includes four types of optimism and joy.
The first type of optimism is the Happy Ending. Judaism, at any event traditional Judaism, believes in happy endings. It claims that all of history will have a happy ending (the Messianic age); and that every life has a happy ending (the World to Come). It believes in resurrection. It refuses to accept the finality of tragic endings, even death.
Modern Jews often have trouble accepting these rather ambitious claims. (Someone once asked Kafka once if he had any hope. “Oh, yes, hope,” he supposedly answered. “Lots of hope. Infinite hope. But not for us.”) In the midst of personal tragedies and pain, it is hard to focus on such a distant hope as the Messianic age.
And so Judaism falls back on a second type of optimism, the joy of the Happy Moment. Even in the middle of tragedies, one can grasp moments of happiness, laughter, and joy. The Sabbath is the essential symbol of this attitude: one is forbidden on the Sabbath to make any preparations for the next day. The daily prayers express the same thought. Each morning, one blesses the new dawn.
But in addition to these, Judaism knows a third sort of joy. Even in the midst of physical pain and even when there is no hope of the future, we are enjoined to do mitzvot and to experience the Joy of the Mitzvah, Simchat Mitzvah, and the joy of the study of Torah, Simchat Torah. Judaism claims that there is no moment that lacks the potential for human contact and participation in community. Hence there is also potential for debate and study, and for kindness and love. Job suffers, but he is not alone.
But what if even that is not true? What if there are moments of darkness and alienation in which even kindness is impossible? (Elie Wiesel focused on this question in his early writings.)
Judaism, fortunately, knows even a fourth type of optimism, one that does not depend on the future, nor on the moment, nor on sociability, a second and more solitary type of simchat Torah. Maimonides directs us to it in part three, chapter nine of Guide of the Perplexed. The world is well-ordered and beautiful, even when it seems to be ordered against us. Job in his alienation and despair is shown an awe-inspiring vision of natural world, a world that is not kind, but does not lack courage. We bless God for the nighttime as well as for the dawn. We bless God on seeing wicked kings as well as on seeing righteous sages. And there is even a blessing for death (“tsiduk ha-din” – “Blessed be the righteous judge”) as well as blessings, infinite blessings, for the always renewed promise of happiness and life. Chag sameach.
Dr. Joseph Davis is Academic Coordinator of the Distance Learning Program, and Associate Professor of Jewish Thought.