 Back in 2013, the Pew Research Center released an extensive portrait of Jewish Americans. And one of the questions they sought to gauge was what qualities or what issues are essential to Jewish identity? What is it that is critical to have a Jewish identity? The leading response that was reported by 73% of the respondents was that remembering the Holocaust is something that is essential to having a Jewish identity. The second most popular item, which was reported by 69% of respondents, was that living an ethical life was the most critical aspect of having a Jewish identity. The third on the list, which was noted by 56% of the respondents said that working for justice and equality were the most important elements of having a Jewish identity. Fourth on the list, which was noted by 49%, they believed that being intellectually curious was the most important quality of a Jewish identity. And then at 42% was the feeling that having a good sense of humor was the most critical element of having a Jewish identity. It's worth noting that this was in a statistical tie with caring about Israel, which came in just at 1% higher at 43%. I don't think this is funny. Along these same lines, I think it's interesting that one of history's most famous Jews, Sigmund Freud, published an entire volume on humor that wasn't very funny, entitled Jokes and their relation to the unconscious, back in 1905. Now Freud's biographer, Ernest Jones, wrote that Freud himself displayed no outward characteristic of being Jewish. There's nothing about him outwardly that appeared that seemed Jewish, except for his love for telling Jewish jokes. That was basically the extent of Freud's Jewishness. Freud's perspective on humor was, shouldn't surprise us, much more Freudian than it was Jewish. Freud maintained that our instinctual urges are often in conflict with the demands of living amongst other people, living in a civilized society. As a result, he said, our aggressive and sexual impulses become repressed. We can't let everything hang out, according to Freud. And he believed that these repressed feelings emerge in dreams, in slips of the tongue, and in jokes. According to Freud, these sexual and aggressive desires, which can't be fully expressed in polite society, can be shared if they appear to be not serious, just a joke. In effect, what Freud sees is that humor is basically a rebellion against the demands of the social order. Those of the neo-Nazis trying to sabotage the program, I'm sure of it, or the Jews for Jesus, one of those two. Now Freud's approach to humor fits into one of the most popular understandings of the theories of humor, which was called the relief theory. And this view sees laughter as the release of pent-up nervous energy. The relief theory became popular around the second half, the third quarter of the 20th century. But there was an older approach to understanding humor, and this is known as superiority theory, which goes all the way back to the ancient Greek philosophers. And they saw laughter basically expressing feelings of superiority over other people or over a former state of ourselves. There was a third view arising back in the 18th century, which is known as incongruity theory. And here, humor is seen as something that violates our mental patterns and expectations. This approach has now become the dominant one among both philosophers and psychologists. One important tweaking of this theory that emerged in the late 20th century was that what we enjoy about humor is not so much incongruity itself, but the resolution of incongruity. And that's what emerges, let's say, in the punchline of a joke. In our world today, it is often taken for granted that having a good sense of humor is important. People, when they report about what kind of qualities they're seeking in a mate, what are they looking for in a marriage partner, often one of the first things that comes up is someone with a good sense of humor. And much of our popular culture today reflects this importance placed upon humor. But it's interesting that prior to the 20th century, joking around was seen much less positively. Plato was especially perturbed by people giving into laughter and joking. Philosophers like Descartes also were very critical about people's involvement in laughter. And this was very common among medieval philosophers up until really relatively modern times. When it comes to Judaism and how Judaism sees humor, the answer is, as often the answer is, it depends. It depends. The wisest of all men, King Solomon, wrote in the third chapter of his book, Koheles, Ecclesiastes, that there's a time for everything, and everything has its time. Verse four of this chapter states, ace livkot ve ace lischok, there's a time to weep and there's a time to laugh. We're now finding ourselves in the weeks between Passover and Shavuot. And the custom among our people is to study a chapter each Shabbat from Pirkei Avot, chapters of the Fathers, which is a volume of the Mishnah that contains a tremendous amount of wisdom and guidance for living. The sixth chapter has a famous list of 48 ways necessary for acquiring Torah. There are 48 prerequisites for acquiring the wisdom of Torah. Number 21 on this list is mi ut skok, minimizing laughter. That's pretty clear to me that this means minimizing laughter rather than eliminating laughter, which by the way, some commentaries suggest. And I think that's the case because if you look at this entire list, it includes things like minimizing business, minimizing social interaction and worldly matters, minimizing pleasure, minimizing sleep, minimizing conversation, according to some translations, minimizing sexual activity. But it's very clear that no one would suggest eliminating all of those altogether. So I think what the mission of teaching is that one of the prerequisites for being able to acquire Torah and acquire wisdom is that we minimize laughter. The Mishnah here is teaching that there is a place for humor and there's a place for laughter, but like everything else in life, it has to be used with discretion. Our Torah literature contains a tremendous amount of concern about inappropriate indulgence in humor and in laughter. In the book of Psalms, chapter one, verse one, right from the starting gate, King David says praiseworthy is the man who walked not in the counsel of the wicked and stood not in the path of the sinful and sat not in the session of the scorners or scoffers. The Hebrew word is late, late-scene. And it's not so clear how to translate this word late. Basically, the commentaries point out, it has to do with someone who mocks, who ridicules, who makes fun, who turns everything into a joke, who is never serious. Nothing to the late is seen as sacred. The late is often a Gossiper, someone who indulges in sarcasm, and the book of Psalms starts out by saying that you wanna basically not be this kind of person. The Midrash, to Exodus Raba, Shmoos Raba 27.6, compares the late to a verse in Proverbs chapter 19, verse 25. The late is compared to a mullake. A mullake is this genocidal tribe that attacked the Jewish people as we came out of Egypt. When God redeemed our people from Egypt 3,300 years ago, you would have thought that no one was going to mess around with us. There was a whole year's worth of dramatic supernatural miracles, and then after Egypt is basically destroyed through those miracles and plagues, we cross the Red Sea where the remainder of Pharaoh's army is drowned after we cross in safety. Who in the world would have thought that these people are gonna be an easy target? And the Torah says that a mullake came to meet us on the way, and the word in Hebrew for to meet us on the way, karchah, is related to the word kar, which means cold. And the sages teach us that what they were trying to do was to cool us down. And one of the ways that's understood is that the Jewish people were red-hot. No one's gonna touch a red-hot flaming people. You'll get burned. And the sages compare what a mullake did to someone who sees a vat of boiling water. No one is gonna jump into this vat of boiling water. What did a mullake do? They jumped in, and by doing that, they brought the temperature down so that other people won't be so hesitant to jump into the vat. And so by attacking the Israelites after we came out of Egypt, the Amalekites were the ultimate scoffers. They were the ultimate people who just didn't take anything seriously. Any straight-thinking person would have stayed far away, wouldn't even thought of attacking the Israelites. The Amalekites do exactly that. And so the Midrash compares someone who lives the life of a let's to a mullake because basically they're not taking life seriously at all. They're not thinking clearly. And all they wanna do is bring good things down. They wanna poke fun. They wanna be cynical. They wanna be scoffers. And to them, everything is a joke. The Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Avodazarah, 18b, maintains that the scoffer that David spoke about in Psalm number one also includes people who waste their time by engaging in mindless entertainment. There's a place for entertainment. There's a place for relaxation. There's a place for engaging in distractions. But to spend hours and hours and hours engaged in this kind of mindless entertainment, we begin to ourselves lose our minds. By relaxing and by taking the pressure off, we are renewing our minds. We're gaining strength to be able to live life seriously. But there are people that Talmud says who that's their entire life. I once heard a story about someone went to a graveyard and saw one of the tombstones, a bowling pin. And the person's epitaph was, I lived to bowl. There's nothing wrong with bowling. Exercise is good and recreation is good. Sports can be good and it can be healthy. But to do it once in a while to let off steam, to relax, to have some exercise, to recharge ourselves, but to live to bowl every day all the time, to live to play video games, to live to play Sudoku, whatever it's called, there are ways in which people can literally blow their brains out of their head by engaging in endless mindless entertainment. And my Moshe Chaim Lutsato in his Masila Shisharim, Pathways of the Upright in chapter five teaches that indulging in fun-seeking and levity, in other words, a flippant approach to life, is a tremendous impediment to living a life that is focused and serious and purposeful. He says the following. Levity destroys the focus and sensitivity to a person's heart, so that reason and intellect no longer rule him. Makari becomes like a shield smeared with oil that deflects and repels arrows from upon it, not allowing them to reach the person's body. So too is the deflective power of levity and makari in the face of reproach and rebuke. For even with one cynical remark or clever witticism, a person will repel from himself enormous amounts of inspiration and motivation, and it could get even worse. Rabbi Akiva teaches in Pirkei Avot Ethics of the Fathers chapter three that inappropriate laughter can ultimately lead a person to immorality, specifically sexual immorality. If nothing is serious and everything is a joke, it's very hard to think clearly in life and to keep our priorities straight. One of the most well-known chapters in the book of Psalms is chapter 126. It is recited before the Birkat Hamazon, the blessings that we say after a meal, but specifically chapter 126 of Psalms is said prior to the Birkat Hamazon that we say on a Shabbat or a holiday or other festive occasion. And what this Psalm describes is both the return of our exiles from the Babylonian captivity and it describes the final redemption of Israel in the ultimate future. Verse two of this Psalm says, then our mouth will be filled with laughter and our tongue with glad songs. And the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Brachot 31a, notes the word then, it'll be then that our mouths will be filled with laughter, only then. But the Talmud says that until the final redemption, we should not fill our mouths with laughter. We have to put a lid on it and not fully rejoice. And this is actually codified as normative Jewish law in the Shulchanaruch, the code of Jewish law in the laws of Tisha Ba'av chapter 560, paragraph five. There's a well-known Midrash that once during a wedding celebration, there were people who went overboard in their happiness, overboard in their celebration. And one of the sages who was present smashed an expensive crystal vase on the ground to get everyone to realize, wait a second, we're still in exile, our people are still suffering, we're not redeemed yet and too much joy, too much celebration, even at a wedding is not appropriate. And this is one of the reasons why at our weddings today, we break a glass under the wedding canopy to recall the fact that we don't have our temple. It still is destroyed. On the other hand, as Tevye would say, on the other hand, there is most certainly a positive role for humor and it's a very positive one. Let's begin with an extremely strange and provocative passage from the Babylonian Talmud tractate of Odazzara 3b. Says the following, each day is comprised of 12 hours. During the first three hours of each day, the Holy One blessed as He sits and involves himself with the Torah, with studying Torah. Now, I should point out that as we discussed here in a previous lecture on Midrash and Agadita, passages like this should not be understood literally. The Talmud goes on to say that during the second three hours of each day, the Almighty sits and judges the entire world. During the third three hour period of each day, He sits and provides nourishment for the entire world. And during the fourth three hour period of each day, He sits and plays with the Leviathan. He amuses himself with the Leviathan, which is a gigantic sea creature that we learn about in Genesis chapter one, verse 21. Our sages say that there were two of them that were created and God killed one of them, salted it, put it away until the end of time or it'll be part of the festive meal during the time of the Messiah. But the other one that's left becomes God's playmate. And God spends three hours at the end of each day, amusing himself and playing with the Leviathan. And the Talmud states that this could be seen in Psalm chapter 104, verse 26, which says, you created this Leviathan to sport with it or to play with it. What in the world is this passage of the Talmud mean? And there have been many commentaries that have attempted to explicate it. There's a fascinating approach to this very puzzling passage that was suggested by Rabbi Yosef Salavachuk. He noted that there is a foundational directive in the Torah of the halachda bedrachav, to walk in the ways of God. That's in Deuteronomy, Dvorem chapter eight, verse six. That one of the mandates of the Torah is to pattern our lives after God. They call it in Latin imitatio dei, to imitate God. And Rabbi Salavachuk explained that we can learn from this passage in the Talmud how to develop a more godly personality by recognizing that we don't need to take everything so seriously. When the Talmud speaks about God doing serious things like studying Torah and judging the world and feeding the world, but then God spends time playing, having a good time. And Rabbi Salavachuk says, we see from this that not everything in life has to be so serious. We saw in many sources that we looked at before that we should take a serious rather than a frivolous stance in life. That really should be our default stance. Rabbi Salavachuk believed that this also can be taken too far. If you're too serious, it can be unhealthy. And we need to strive for balance. This passage of the Talmud might be teaching that playfulness and humor can help us keep a healthy perspective in life by recognizing that some things in life are not really that important in the larger scheme of things. And we're able to become sensitized to the fact that some things are truly important in life and truly weighty in life by understanding that a lot of things in our life are just not that important. One of the great problems that so many of us have is we make a big deal about almost everything. And it's not worth making a big deal about everything. We've got to learn how to put things into perspective, Rabbi Salavachuk teaches. I often tell this story that back in 1998, I went with my wife to India to run Passover Saders for Israeli travelers. And at the end of our trip, we decided to go to Goa, not to go to Agra. We decided to go to Agra because it's impossible to go to India without going to see the Taj Mahal. Now the reality is that it's not easy traveling in India. It's not a simple thing. And we ended up going by train and normally, we say Jewish time, it could be 15 minutes late, 20 minutes late, India time is a day late. And that's how the trains run and that's how your life runs. And so although we had planned to get to Agra in time to see the Taj Mahal, we ended up getting into Agra very late. And we had to get a rickshaw from the train station to the Taj Mahal. Of course, the rickshaw breaks down. We have to go wait for another rickshaw, the second rickshaw breaks down, finally get into a third rickshaw. And this guy manages to get us to the Taj Mahal. And I'm looking at my watch and I'm very upset because it's now a quarter to five and the place we were understanding was gonna close at five. And we're exhausted and we've been running and we're frustrated and we finally get there. We're gonna have 15 minutes, apparently. And I look at this building and I say to my wife, that's the Taj Mahal? For that, I killed myself coming here to see that. I couldn't believe it. So my wife says to me, that's not the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is behind this building. That's just, I don't know, a preview or something. So I learned something very important that day. We ended up getting to the Taj Mahal and we were able to stay for a while. It was magnificent, it was beautiful, it was spectacular. But I thought about this day a bit. And I realized, how important is it really in life to see an old, beautiful building? I mean, it's nice, it's fascinating. You can cross it off your bucket list. But is it really the most important thing in life to go see a beautiful old building? I would like to see a beautiful old building for the Taj Mahal. But I ended up literally killing myself. The train ride is dangerous. The rickshaws are dangerous. I, my blood pressure went up 3,000 points trying to get there. And at the end, I was quite disappointed to see the building that I thought was a Taj Mahal. And I made a resolution that day. And I realized something important. I said to myself, you know, you're living in an amazing city. Toronto is one of the Jewish gems of the world. It's really an incredible city if you want to be a serious Jew. You know, there are very few Jewish people who move to Vancouver for the Yiddish guide. No one goes all the way out there for the Judaism because it's not there so much, right? Toronto happens to be an incredible place. It is so rich in Torah. It is so rich in teachers. It's so rich in experiences that you can have to grow spiritually and to grow in wisdom and to learn Torah. And so I said to myself, if I went to such great lengths to see the Taj Mahal, how could I face myself if I'm living in Toronto and I don't make at least an equal attempt to go here, speakers that come into our city to give talks and to give lectures? What's my excuse? And I think for myself, I think it's important. And sometimes people look at me and they say, what are you doing at this lecture? You know, you're a rabbi already. You need to hear another rabbi talk. And I say, yes, I do. I find it important. I find it important to go to Torah lectures. And if I'm able to, I will go out of the way and make it my point of being there. Now this idea of not taking everything so seriously and knowing how to laugh when something is absurd, I think is especially valuable in our hot headed culture where people too often react with anger and hostility, especially in the bubble of social media. There is a tendency to fly off the handle and jump down people's throats at the slightest provocation or slightest disagreement. People see red very quickly. And I think that the Talmud here in this story of God playing with Olivia Son, Talmud might be encouraging us to take a chill pill and perhaps choose to see what's amusing and absurd about life sometimes, rather than seeing red. Remember years ago, I used to go to the Minsker congregation downtown for the high holidays. I used to lead a beginner's high holiday service. And I remember one year I told a story on Yom Kippur about a person who grew up very distant from Judaism and ended up becoming a rabbi. And the story was about someone who was on the west coast in California and Los Angeles. And one night he was driving somewhere and he got stuck in traffic and he was very frustrated. He began honking his horn and a police officer came over and said, excuse me, sir, what are you honking for? And he looks at his watch and he says, excuse me, I'm in a huge rush. I have to get somewhere. And it's frustrating being stuck in all this traffic. And the policeman says, well, you'll have to be patient, sir, because tonight's a very important Jewish holiday and people are trying to get to the temple. And this fellow in his car slaps himself in his forehead and says, oh my God, this Mexican traffic cop knew that it was Yom Kippur and I didn't know it was Yom Kippur. Anyway, that became a catalyst for him to go and study Torah and after many years he became a rabbi. So at the end of the services that day someone comes over to me, very upset, and says, rabbi, I just want you to know I was extremely offended by your remarks. And I was surprised and I said, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. What was it that I said? And he said to me, my girlfriend's father is Mexican. Okay. I could have gotten very defensive. I could have gotten back into his face. I could have questioned his insanity. But I focused rather on how bizarre it is that people often exhibit a tremendous ability to take offense at almost anything. And I just saw it as funny, as sad really, but sadly funny. And I think that when we have encounters with people, I think it's healthy rather than to get upset and to get angry and to get aggressive, which is often what happens so frequently in our world. We're just looking for a chance to get down someone's throat and to attack them or counter attack them. Just rather to just see life sometimes as funny, to see life as absurd, to see our world as a little bit crazy, and it's funny to look at sometimes. There's another wonderful Talmudic passage from Tractay Taniq, 22A, where a Broca saw Elijah the prophet in a huge marketplace full of people. And he asked Elijah, are there any people here in this marketplace that are destined to be rewarded in the world to come? Do you see any particularly righteous people here in this marketplace? And Elijah the prophet pointed out two fellows who probably didn't look like the most spiritual people in the world, whatever that means. And Broca approached these two fellows and asked, what do you guys do? What's your game? And they said that they are bedouche, they're gestures, they're clowns, they entertain people who are sad. We find people, they said we try to find people that look sad, that look depressed. And we go over to them and we tell them jokes and we cheer them up. And this kind of joking is seen by Elijah the prophet and by the Talmud as extremely meritorious. Rabbi Joshua Curland, who is a contemporary rabbi and author of a multi-volumed work called A Time to Laugh and A Time to Listen, points out that the word in this story for gesture, bedouche, which is related to the word we all know, badchan, badchan were often these people that would tell jokes at weddings. That the word has a root of beth dalid khet. Beth is the Hebrew letter that's represented by the number two, beth is the number two, dalid is the number four, and khet is the number eight. So the word beth dalid khet goes two, four, eight, meaning that what the word itself is a picture of is expansiveness, progression. And Rabbi Curland suggests that what a spirit of joy can do, what a properly-tell-joke can do, is to help us develop, help the person receiving the humor have a mindset where we're opened up through this laughter. We have an expansive mind. There's an old expression that laughter is the best medicine. I'm not sure when this expression came into our world, but I think that it was probably first expressed by King Solomon. Back in the book of Proverbs, chapter 17, 22, where Solomon says, a glad heart is as beneficial as a cure. Mymonides, who himself was a famous doctor, wrote that a person should strengthen a patient's vital power, a doctor should do this, should strengthen a patient's vital power by distracting their mind with joyful stories that will widen their soul and dilate their heart. You can actually help people physically with humor. And we know there have been so many studies about the organic medicinal benefits of humor. There are now many hospitals that employ medical clowns and other people that are there to cheer up patients. One of the funniest people in Jewish history was Rehershala Ostropolar. And he once related a story about Rev. Sintchah Bunim of Peshishchah. The Rev. Sintchah Bunim once saw a man who was far out in the waters and his arms were flailing as he was in a panic because he was about to drown. Rev. Sintchah Bunim realized that he could never reach this person in time to save him, so he tried humor. And he shouted out to this person, hey, give my regards to the Livya son. So the man began to laugh and through this laughter he regained his composure, he relaxed and he was able to keep himself afloat until help arrived. Two of the most important uses of humor are as a resistance to oppression and a survival mechanism against persecutors. This is something that certainly honed the Jewish sense of humor over history. This was a tactic that was used unfortunately by our people for many, many centuries. One of the great persecutors of the Jewish people over hundreds and hundreds of years was the church. And so there developed many jokes about Jewish people and their relationship to the church. One of them is about this priest who's in charge of a large town and he challenges the Jewish community to a debate. And he says that we're going to have a debate. He says the king has appointed me to represent the church and I want someone from the Jewish community to come and debate with me. And unfortunately the stakes of this debate were gonna be very, very high. The person that lost the debate would actually end up being killed. The king was gonna kill the loser of the debate. So none of the people in the shtetl in this little Jewish town were really eager to debate the priest. And everyone was discussing who should do it, who's gonna go, and no one was really willing to step forth and debate. So finally, what happened was every town had at least one what they call the town of Shugener, the town Strangoid, the weird person. And so the town of Shugener steps forward and says, you know what? I would like to debate the priest. And everyone's looking at him and saying, what, he's gonna go, you're gonna go. What's what are you talking about? He says, you know, to tell you the truth, I've never seen the inside of the king's palace. And I would like to have a chance to go see the inside of the king's palace. So I volunteered to debate. Anyway, no one else was really willing to take on the challenge. So he went forward, comes to the palace, he meets up with the priest and he sees the king. And the king lays down the ground rules for the debate. The king says, look, each one of you is gonna ask the other one a question. And the other one will have to give the answer. If you're not able to answer the question, you will be put to death. Fair enough. So the priest is given the first question and he turns to the Jew and says, I don't understand you Jewish people. You insist there's only one God and God is one, but in your own Torah, the Bible uses in the first chapter of Genesis the word, the name of God Elohim. He says to the Jew, Elohim ends with im. And im indicates a plural. So how could you insist that there's only one God and that God is one? Obviously, if we refer to God as Elohim, it's not so simple that God is simply one. So the Jewish fellow looks at the priest and he says, well, it's an interesting point you're making, but you know there's a word that also ends in im and it's mayim. Mayim is water. He says, look, there's water up in the heavens. There's water below the seas. There's water on the land. There's water all over the place, but at the end of the day, it's just water. Water is water. So I think that just like water is water and there aren't millions of kinds of water, there's one God and that's it. So the king hears the answer and the king says, okay, we'll accept that answer. Now it's the turn of this Jewish fellow. He looks at the priest and he says, you know, if you knew Hebrew, you wouldn't have asked me such a stupid question. That's what he says to the priest. So the priest is indignant and the priest says, what are you talking about? Hebrew, I am fluent in Hebrew. So the machine says to him, really? Says, yes, I am thoroughly fluent in Hebrew. So the Jewish fellow reaches down on the ground. He sees a little rock, picks it up. He goes over to the wall and he writes three words in Hebrew. And he says to this priest, what do these three words say? So the priest reads, ani lo yodea. That's what it says. And the Jew asks him, what does it mean? He says, ani lo yodea, I don't know. And the king looks at the priest and the king says, what does it mean? And the priest says, ani lo yodea, I don't know. The king kills the priest, end of the debate. So the machine goes back to the shtetl and they can't believe they're seeing him. They thought he would have been killed. They thought he would have lost the debate. And they say, you're back, what happened? He said, well, I obviously won the debate. And they said, well, tell us what happened. And he told them the whole story. And they said, how did you think about this kind of a strategy? How did you come up with such an idea? He says, look, when I was a kid, I went to Haider. I went to Hebrew school. And the Rebbe was teaching us one day. And the Rebbe wrote on the wall, on the board, he wrote on the wall these three words, ani lo yodea. And none of the students in the class knew what it meant. So we asked the Rebbe, what does it say? The Rebbe said it says, ani lo yodea. And what does it mean? And the teacher says, I don't know. So the Nashikinu says, look, if my Rebbe didn't know what these words meant, I was sure that the priest wouldn't know what these words meant. Hebrew was also used by our people as, again, not just resistance against those who oppressed us, but as a way of striking back, often through these jokes. They tell a story that in the 19th century, there was an old Jew who was traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. And an officer from the Czar's army approaches him and he grabs him and he says, in a challenging way, tell me, how is it that you Jews are so much brighter than everyone else? So the old Jew says, well, I'll tell you, it's because of the herring that we eat. So this officer says, herring? He says, really? Do you have any on you? So the old Jew says, yeah. And he pulls out a jar full of herring. So the officer says to him, how much do you want for it? So the old Jew says, 30 rubles, a fortune, 30 rubles I want. So the guy gives him the money and he takes a few bites from the herring and he says, this isn't a big deal. He says, I can buy stuff like this in Moscow for a few Kopecks. And the Jew looks at him and says, you see, it's working already. Now the ultimate place where this kind of resistance took place was in the Shoah, in the Holocaust. Steve Lipman has written an extensive book dealing with the use of humor during the Holocaust called Laughter in Hell, published by Jason Aronson. And I'm not going to rehearse any of the stories or jokes from this book, but we should understand that when we were going through Hitler's Nazi Germany, we really didn't have any resources with which to maintain our sanity, maintain our equilibrium. And so throughout the war, all across Europe, our people used humor basically as a way of keeping themselves sane and of surviving the hells of Nazi Germany. I want to mention one more story about how humor is able to expand our consciousness and our minds, and this was used pedagogically by the fourth century rabbinic sage Raba. The Talmud teaches in Traktat Shabbat 30b that he would often begin his lectures by telling a joke or some kind of humorous comment. And by doing this, he was able to open up the minds of his students so they'd be in a much better frame of mind to be able to study. Now what I'd like to do is conclude by sharing with you, I think the most important thing that there is for us to understand about humor from a Jewish point of view. The truth is there is something very Jewish about humor. And in some ways, humor is the essence of Judaism, the essence of Judaism. How do we know this? So there is a teaching by our sages that if you want to understand anything in life, if you want to understand anything in Torah, if you want to understand anything in Judaism, find the first place that it appears in the Torah. And that's going to be the headquarters. Now there is a handy tool that you can use to find every word in the Bible it's called a concordance, a concordancia. And if you look up the word for laughter, at least one of the words for laughter in Hebrew actually happens to be my Hebrew name. My Hebrew name is Yitzchak, and Yitzchak means he will laugh. And he was named Yitzchak because throughout the story leading up to his birth and even after his birth, everyone is laughing. There's laughter all over the place. And his life is a life that is characterized by laughter. Ironically, so if you go through the concordancia, you'll see that not only are the first places in the Bible this word of tzachok that comes up are in the story of Isaac and his birth, but the majority of places in the Bible where this word occurs are right there in the middle of the book of Genesis. Sarah says, after she receives the news from the angel that comes to visit Abraham and herself, her husband is 100 years old, Sarah is 90 years old. They have not been able to have children up until this point. And the angel announces to them that you're gonna have a son, both of them. Abraham laughs, ostensibly laughs with joy. Sarah's laugh seems to be a little bit more cynical like she's saying, yeah, right. Here we are. We're really sort of pushing the outer limits of a human life. We have not managed to have children until this day. And you're telling me that a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman are gonna give birth through a baby. And she says, Sochak osa li Elohim. God will make a laughing stock out of me. Because think about how weird it is, how absurd it is. Not just that a couple like this are gonna have a child, but imagine, I remember a number of months ago I was at No Frills and I saw someone shopping there and for their shopping cart they used a baby carriage. So I'm looking at this baby carriage and it's filled with groceries. And it just struck me as funny, it looked very weird. So imagine seeing like a 100 year old couple walking down the street with a little tiny baby in a carriage. You know, if you were told that these are the parents, it would look incredibly strange and weird and it would be funny. Now, by Shem Shin Rafferl Hirsch explains that the word Sochak, laughter, is basically a reversal of fortune. He says, laughter basically takes place when something is expected and then what happens is the exact opposite. You don't expect a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman to give birth. And Hirsch says that this word of Sochak is related etymologically to the word Sochak to cry out in pain. Because he says really both words are the same thing. When a person is crying out in pain it's not what they expected. They didn't expect to be subjected to this kind of pain and discomfort. And what happens is when their fortunes have been reversed and now there's a new reality, their reaction is to crowd in pain. In the same way, when people are not expecting to be redeemed, when they're not expecting to have a reversal of fortunes that are incredibly positive, they break out laughing because it's surprising, it's shocking in a good way. When you think about it, Isaac was not just the product of elderly parents who really all things being equal should not have given birth. But his entire life was one where it didn't look like he would ever survive. Because at one point his father takes him up to the top of the mountain to be killed, to be sacrificed. Everything about Isaac's life represents the idea that this is not going to work out. That this family is never going to have a future. It doesn't look like they're ever going to have a future. Every turn of the story, it looks like it's the end of the story. What is humor? Humor is as we saw in congruity. Humor is absurdity. Humor is an unexpected outcome. Humor is when the natural order suddenly is turned upside down when there's a sudden reversal. Comedy is based upon timing. It's got to be a sudden reversal. As Steve Martin would call it, timing. And we see this in the holiday of Purim. There's an ancient, Kabbalistic text known as the Safer Yitzira, one of the oldest Kabbalistic texts. And it explains that each month of the year corresponds to a certain quality of the human personality. And the Safer Yitzira says that the month of Adar, the last month, the 12th month in the Hebrew calendar, corresponds to the quality of laughter. We know that Purim is the most joyous of our holidays. And when you think about it, it's because Purim is the holiday of humor, of something that's absurd in the fact that there is a total sudden reversal of fortune. The actual Megillah says, v'nahaf hulhu, everything turned on a dime and everything was switched around so quickly, it would have taken everyone by surprise and the reaction was laughter and joy. Think about what happens on Purim. The Jews are in exile in the Persian Empire. There's a vicious Jew hater named Haman who is bent upon genocide. Haman builds a gallows ready to hang Mordechai. And letters have gone out from the king, Khashverosh, to all 127 provinces in the Empire of Persia, basically giving the go-ahead to exterminate every single Jew, men, woman, child. And in a split second, it turns around. On the very same gallows that Haman built to hang Mordechai, he is hanged. And on the very day that was designated for the extermination of all the Jewish people, the king gives them permission to defend themselves and on that very day they vanquish their enemies. In a split second, it all turns around. Purim is the holiday of humor. Purim is the holiday ultimately of laughter because it's the ultimate holiday of incongruity, of absurdity, of unexpected outcome and a complete and sudden reversal of fortune. We know that the coming of Messiah will be very similar. Just like Purim, Messiah will come in an instant. And the whole world is going to instantaneously be turned upside down. The Messiah is going to emerge out of crisis. What our sages say is that prior to the revelation of Messiah, there's going to be the Khevle Mashiach, the birth pangs of the Messiah. And just like in the birth of a human child, it doesn't really look like it's going to turn out good. If you watch a woman in labor, you're not going to assume that after all this travail and all this pain and all this difficulty, at the end there's going to be a little baby emerging, getting smacked on the tuchas and everyone screaming mazaltov. It didn't look like that was going to happen. In the same way that a lot of life takes place like that, for a tree to grow, for any plant to grow, the seed in the ground disintegrates. It looks like it's game over. It's not an even progress until something sprouts forth. Something is planted and then it looks like it's going in the wrong direction. It begins to deteriorate, to disintegrate, to rot. And out of that rotting disintegrating seed sprouts a plant, a tree. And the same thing with the birth of a human being. It doesn't look like the birth process is going to be a very happy one. And yet there is a sudden reversal, a sudden transformation, where everything turns out beautifully with tremendous joy. The coming of Mashiach will be very similar. We say in the book of Psalms, az yemale sechokpinu, then our mouths will be full of joy. Because then we're going to see the miraculous climax of Jewish history. Jewish history is a history where it never looked like we were going to survive. The Jewish people are compared to a moon and the moon goes through these cycles of waxing and waning. And every month we're about to disappear. It looks like that's the end, there's no more moon. And then what happens, boom, it reemerges. And in the same way Jewish history has been 3,000 years of persecution, 3,000 years where it looked like at every turn along the way, it was about to be lights out. And yet the Almighty has always saved us, has always miraculously preserved us. And this is not going to last forever. We're told that in the future, Isaac's name, Yitzchak, is Yitzchak. He will laugh. That ultimately we're told the Jewish people will get the last laugh. That history is a process where things will turn around at the end in the most positive, beautiful ways for our people. Modern Israel is a miracle. We're just celebrating this year, the 70th birthday of the modern state of Israel. When you think about it, it's totally miraculous. When we came to our land back in the 19th century, Mark Twain reported that it was barren, it was empty, it was waste, it was nothing there, it was a desert, it was a place where nothing grew. But Talmud says that as long as the Jewish people are not on their land, it will never produce for any other nation. But one of the sure signs of our redemption is when we return to our land, the land will produce for us. I was in Israel over Passover and one of the things that I did was I visited a farming area just about six kilometers away from the Egyptian border. It was a farming area that was started by people that were expelled from Yameet, the desert community in around 1980. These are people that didn't know a lot about farming and they came to an area that was desert. Nothing was there, you wouldn't imagine that this is going to be a place that will become a place that produces worldwide flowers for export, incredible crops, flowers, vegetables, fruits, out of a desert floor. That's what took place in the land of Israel. When we came back to our land, we made a desert bloom. We came back to our homeland. Hebrew was not a spoken language. Hebrew was only a language that was on paper, that people read. Hebrew was not a spoken language. And at the end of the 19th century, Eliezer Ben-Yahuda had a dream that this language will come back to life. And he embarked on a project to make sure that Hebrew is gonna be revitalized. And within his lifetime arose a generation of Hebrew speakers where today, Hebrew is the spoken language of the land of Israel. A people in exile for 2,000 years returns to their homeland. A land that was barren and empty and a desert is blooming. A language that fell into disuse has come back to life. And we're told in our scriptures that the spiritual opponents of the Jewish people, the people who throughout our history have insisted that we are a people who are blind. We are a people who don't understand the truth. We are a people who don't get it. We are a people who are misled. That's been our history. And our Bible tells us that in the future, the entire world is gonna come to the recognition that we have been right all along. They're the ones that have been mistaken. And so the scriptures tell us that in those days, 10 people from every nation are gonna grab hold of the clothing of a person who is Jewish. And they're gonna say, we want to follow you. We know that God is with you. What an incredible turnaround in the history of the world. As it says on Purim, that Nahafochu, everything is turned around and flips on a dime. We're told that that's going to be what happens ultimately in our history that Israel is going to be redeemed, not just physically, but Israel is going to be redeemed spiritually. The entire world is gonna acknowledge the truth of the God of Israel, the truth of the teachings of the Torah. May we see it fully realized in our day.