...When a person eats, drinks, and celebrates on a festival, he should not let himself become overly drawn to drinking wine, mirth, and levity, saying "whoever indulges in these activities more is increasing his observance of the mitzvah of rejoicing." For drunkenness, profuse mirth, and levity are not rejoicing; they are frivolity and foolishness.
And we were not commanded to indulge in frivolity or foolishness, but rather in rejoicing that involves the service of the Creator of all existence. Thus [Deuteronomy 28:47] states, "Because you did not serve the Eternal, your God, with happiness and a glad heart, and with an abundance of prosperity." This teaches us that service [of God] involves joy. And it is impossible to truly serve God while in the midst of levity, frivolity, or drunkenness.
(א)....איזהו עשיר? השמח בחלקו, שנאמר: (תהלים קכח ב): "יגיע כפיך כי תאכל אשריך וטוב לך".אשריך, בעולם הזה .וטוב לך, לעולם הבא.
(1) ....Who is the rich one? He who is happy with his lot, as it says, "When you eat [from] the work of your hands, you will be happy, and it will be well with you" (Psalms 128:2). "You will be happy" in this world, and "it will be well with you" in the world to come.
...To be clear, when I say joy, I don’t mean happiness, or optimism, or contentment. You can turn your back on the world and find all those things. When I say that joy is the source my audacity, I am speaking the midst of heart wrenching grief and anger for my country, in the midst of my own struggles with depression and loneliness, anxiety and overwhelm.
Joy is to mood as stars are to the weather, a constant to steer by, sometimes hidden by storm clouds, but high above them, untouched by wind or rain. This is not to say that the weather of the world isn’t violent, drenching, harsh. We could spin forever from emergency to emergency, shouting no to each new crime—but that would be steering by chasing clouds. If we are to live audaciously, we need to step into the calm eye of the storm, and steer by the stars, to imagine in rich detail, the biggest, most delicious, satisfying, inclusive future that we can, a great flowering of human potential and wellbeing, project our hearts and minds into that future, and then spend our lives walking toward it, and each time the weather buffets us, wait for a glimpse of sky, find that bright point of light, and adjust our course.
But in order for that dream to be accurate, to burn bright enough for navigation, it needs to be rooted in the reality of here and now, all of it. This is how we turn trauma into light. Trauma is not the opposite of joy, it’s the husk around its seed. The more we face into the world, the more we let ourselves know how other people live, the more we learn not only about their pain and rage, but also their love and resilience, their defiance and hope, and it’s from that full spectrum of knowing that we fill in the details and colors of the world we want. There is a joy that rises from being with what’s true, even when that truth includes the terrible...
...We don’t need to spend every moment of the day shouting no. We can learn to sing a thousand-voiced harmony of yes...
It’s true that audacity can arise from crisis, and courage can spring from fear. Emergencies can draw more from us than we ever thought possible, but that kind of boldness runs on adrenaline. It doesn’t have the horsepower for the long haul. When the crisis passes, we settle back, exhausted, into our accustomed lives.
To live a lifetime of audacity, dwelling in the place where joy meets justice, year after year, can only be sustained by being so in love with a vision of what’s possible that we no longer flirt with despair.
- Aurora Levins Morales, from "Tai: A Yom Kippur Sermon"