In the wake of the brutal tragedy that hit close to home both literally and figuratively with the despicable murder of a young Israeli family while they slept, and in the wake of the global tragedy in Japan, there is a deep voice within each of us that is waiting for the punch line- where is the world heading? And for those wondering whether there is a punch line that is what the holiday of Purim is all about. The nature of the day teaches that there is a grand punch line, a grand plan to all of this madness even if we don’t always see it. So for now, we need to learn to appreciate punch lines, and what better way than with some good jokes.
What makes a good joke? It works by taking a person down a specific ideological path and after a few steps down that path, a massive paradigm shift occurs. Depending on the joke, it could change how everything has been understood until that point or simply how we understand the final scenario. For example, ‘what is black, white, and red all over?’ The first two words intimate that we are dealing with colors, and so our brain is hurtled down that path and assumes that red is also a color. As the brain begins to cogitate through the realm of possible objects with these colors, the punch line comes- a newspaper! Red does not mean a color, but the verb ‘read’. With this new information, a massive shift takes place and we are freed from our current thought process and instantaneously placed in a new paradigm. This vast intellectual movement invokes freedom, and therefore, makes us happy to the point of laughter.
The importance of laughter pervades Jewish thinking. It starts with Isaac, whose name in Hebrew, Yitzchak, means ‘he will laugh’. What exactly will be so funny? The paradigm of nature that we adhere to so strongly will be exposed for what it is- a mask. If we analyze Yitzchak’s life, it began at the punch line; he was literally a living joke. Born to a nonagenarian, which if that wasn’t bad enough, didn’t even have a womb, his life began above nature. Further, he spent his life digging wells, a physical representation of a joke. Imagine, hundreds of miles from the nearest body of water, you pick a spot on the ground and tell a person there is water here. The person looks around and blankly responds, ‘you must be dreaming’. So you pick up a shovel and dig and, indeed, for the first few hours nothing but dirt come up. After a large heap of dirt and lots of sweat, as you yourself are starting to believe in the other person’s observations, the paradigm shift comes, water!
The Talmud takes it a step further and says that laughter is crucial to Torah learning. Why? Because learning is about paradigm shifts. Often, new information is similar to dirt- a seemingly inert set of disconnected particles that is hard to fit with what you knew before. The trick is to find the water, or understanding behind the information. Not at all coincidentally, that is why the word for explanation in Hebrew, ‘be’er’, is the same for ‘well’, because an explanation is also a paradigm shift. A person learns a concept, and has a cursory understanding, until a competent teacher comes and shows you how the concept connects to all other concepts you’ve learned and how your cursory understanding is not really an understanding at all, it is dirt. For this reason, it says in Peaschim 117a: Before beginning to lecture to his students Rabbah would say something humorous and the students would laugh. Aside from a good pedagogical technique, Rabbah is also prepping his students for what the process of learning is all about, finding the punch line.
Or in the following strange story in Shabbos 77a it says: Rav Zeira found Rav Yehuda on the doorstep of his (Rav Yehuda) father in law’s house, and he saw that (Rav Yehuda) was in a humorous mood and if he could ask him questions, even trivial ones about the world, that he would answer him. He said to him, Why do goats walk before sheep? He answered him just like the creation of the world. First there was dark, and then there was light. Why do goats have exposed reproductive organs uncovered by hair, and yet sheep have reproductive organs that are covered by hair? These that give clothing and cover us (sheep) are covered themselves. These (goats) that do not cover us have exposed reproductive organs… Questions here run rampant, like why do we care that Rav Yehuda was at his father in law’s house or why are we asking about sheep and goats and why are we asking about trivial things? With one major concept we can understand everything. There is nothing trivial! These questions that seem trivial only seem that way if you view life as not containing a punch line. But as soon as you see that everything has purpose, then the depth is exposed. And the depth here is that the world works by exposing us to a system of darkness first, or what the Kabbalists call din, and then exposes us to G-d’s light of chessed. It is no surprise that the image of the devil is a goat with his short, bristly hair because he represents the revealed world that we see, the world of din. Only after a sufficient dose of din and coarseness can we get to the sheep with the white puffy coat that represents light and chessed.[1] A joke which is only a punch line is not funny. You need to first go through the process of din, the goat, before you can reach the sheep and the chessed.
It may be an unpleasant thought that only after all is said in done will we get the joke, but in the meantime we have to suffer. But there is one caveat. The grand joke is for everyone ELSE to see the truth, but a Jew’s task is to anticipate the grand punch line, and therefore, see every day life as containing a punch line. Take the tragedy in Itamar. The terrorists initially entered a different home first, but found it empty. Why was it empty? The people who were supposed to stay there that Shabbat ended up in the hospital doing further tests for a sick child. Imagine the frustration of Shabbat in a hospital-din. But imagine what the thought was after they found out they were saved-chessed. Granted not everything in life can always be seen so clearly, but there are enough moments that show us that nature is nothing more than a mask!
[1] See the Afiki Yam on the Gemara in Shabbos. Since the goats have short, unrefined hair, they go before the sheep. Further, since what we see is an unrefined natural world, so too we are exposed to the unrefined natural parts of the Goat, while the hidden love of the world is tucked modestly under the hair of the sheep
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