As everybody who knows me knows by now, I love to navigate the waters
of popular culture. There is much to
enjoy in the literature, music and film that is produced for our entertainment
and edification. There is also much that
repels. Some people immerse themselves
in whatever is popular, and get swept along in it. Some keep completely aloof from it. I choose to swim in it, sometimes going along
with the flow and sometimes swimming against its current.
I have shared with you with
reflections from this enterprise. I
think that we all share this tendency to be selective consumers of popular
culture. There are those whose
deep religiosity leads them to avoid it altogether. I don’t have a bone to pick with that, except
to reject it and continue to enjoy the arts that surround me.
This enjoyment of the arts is
total. I listen to music incessantly. Oh, I enjoy quiet moments with no music. But mostly I drive with the radio on. And listen to playlists whilst working out in
the gym. During the latter times, I
prefer high-energy music of the kind that I don’t normally listen to casually.
I was thinking about this today, as
I looked at what insights my colleagues had to offer on the weekly Torah
reading. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks talks
about the difference between happiness and joy.
He defines ‘happy,’ represented by the Hebrew word ashrei, as a
state of well-being, or wholeness and security.
I have similarly defined it in the past.
Rabbi Sacks points out that happiness is an individual state that
one achieves as an individual through a personal, internal quest for
happiness. Another of my favourite
authors, Dennis Prager, points out that happiness is a choice and that
we are obligated to choose, because the more happy people there are in a
given place or in the world as a whole, the more Goodness there is. Happy people bring Goodness. Miserable people bring misery.
Joy is a related concept, but an
entirely different animal.
Joy includes happiness, but it also
includes ecstatic delight. It includes
well-being, but it agitates to make us want to sing out. It is a state that we cannot be in constantly –
it would not even be desirable to be in it constantly! – but which we should be
able to achieve at select times.
Rabbi Sacks asserts that joy –
represented by the Hebrew word simcha – is the theme of the Book of
Deuteronomy. He shows this by counting
the number of times the word or one of its variants, appears in the Torah. It appears one once in each of the four
preceding books of the Torah, but no less than a dozen times in Devarim, Deuteronomy.
Sacks further asserts that joy is a
collective quality, achieved in community or at least in the company of another
or others. Happiness is independent. But joy – collective joy – is the goal
of Jewish life. Deuteronomy, as I’ve
pointed out, is Moses’ final instruction to the people before they cross over
the Jordan to take possession of Eretz Yisrael.
Specifically, in this week’s Torah
portion, the people Israel are commanded to bring forth to the Kohen the first
fruits of the produce of the land they are about to enter and possess. And they are to rejoice in all the
goodness that Hashem has given them. The
commandment to rejoice reflects that they are obligated to look beyond the
distractions of everyday life and recognise the abundance, with which G-d will
bless them. And react with joy.
In the gym my workout music varies, depending
upon my mood and my energy level. Like
many of you, I use my mobile phone as a music player in the gym – in my case an
iPhone. My phone has enough memory to
hold my entire music collection, so I have lots of tunes to choose from every
time I visit the gym.
Just the other day, I was working
out to the music of my fellow Miamian Gloria Estefan. The Cuban-born Estefan is one of my favourite
female pop singers. Her voice is incredibly
clear, her tonality accurate to a degree that few artists can muster. Whilst the moods of her songs vary, she specialises
in high-energy songs. There’s far more
to her, though; she and her husband. Emilio Estefan have been involved in many
good works. They have spread much goodness
in the community through their works and largesse.
So I was in the gym on the strider,
jammin’ to Gloria Estefan’s album Gloria! And the song I Just Wanna be Happy came
on. It is one of my favourites, but I
only let it run during my workout if I am feeling really energetic. The tagline
of the song, revealing its message, is: I
just wanna be Happy, Joyous, and Free!
I was thinking about it this morning
as I read Rabbi Sacks on Ki Tavo. Sacks
points out that happiness should to infuse our inner lives. And joy should characterise our communal life. And he doesn’t mention freedom in this
week’s drash, but that is a theme that runs through his writings generally. Freedom is G-d’s most magnificent gift
to us. It is freedom that we
celebrate when we sit down to our Passover Seders. The transition from slavery to freedom, and
the possibilities that opens, is the very basis of Jewish life. And how do we achieve freedom? When individual happy people join together in
joy. And then they become free.
So I went to my old friend,
Wikipedia. And I found out that Gloria Estefan’s
song, I Just Wanna be Happy was written by none other than Lawrence
Dermer. Well, that’s a familiar
name! The current ambassador of Israel
to the United States is Ron Dermer, who is from my hometown, Miami Beach. I looked up Lawrence Dermer. I couldn’t find a connection with the family
of Jay and Ron Dermer, but I did find that Lawrence, a frequent musical
collaborator with Gloria Estefan, is cantor at Temple Beth-El of Boca Raton! So what I’m trying to say here is…when Gloria
Estefan sings that she just wants to be happy, joyous and free, it was a Jew who
is learned in and infused with the spirit of Judaism, who put those words in
her mouth. Well…waddaya think of that??!
Would that Happy, Joyous, and Free
be our constant approach to Jewish life. Each one of us has an individual quest to
achieve happiness. We come together in a
spirit of joy. And thus we have the
tools to achieve true freedom. What a
worthy goal! It contrasts so sharply
with the misery that regrettably infuses so much of Jewish life, here and
elsewhere. May we, in our communities,
find ourselves able to transcend this misery and infuse our lives with
happiness and joy. Shabbat shalom.
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