Bringing Forth Joy

Our uncertain times and troubled world create a potent moment to enter into Jewish leadership. As structures and world views crumble around us, the members of our class are being released into the world, each of us deployed exactly where we will best serve. Each of us willing to be part of the untangling of what was and eager to breathe life into what is becoming.

We are prepared with many tools. One special tool we have received as part of the legacy of mysticism, chasidut, and Reb Zalman himself, is a deep connection to joy. We choose to stand up to an uncertain, changing world and bring our gifts with joy.

Joy is an oft-unspoken value inherent in Jewish Renewal, alongside paradigm shift, embodiment, deep ecumenism, and Gaia consciousness. Joy is not the same as “happiness” and it is not meant to distract us from the challenges we face. Joy, as we understand it, is a kind of kedushah – a flow of holiness that holds complexity. It can be present even in grief. It can function as a re-source, connecting us to Source. Our call to joy is not for the purpose of “fixing” the troubles of the world; rather to nourish, refine, develop, evolve. Joy is the river that flows from Eden to water the garden. And the garden is parched.   

It is with joy and awe that we enter into this smichah ceremony.  We will be the first musmachimot group to complete our zoom education on a zoom platform. And this is another paradigm shift move: something is being smashed, broken, and we can embrace this change. As a collective, as Jewish Renewal clergy, we are ready to see around the corner of a changing world.

Our smichah ceremony today is also cause for joy – for us, our teachers, our families, our communities, and hopefully the world. We choose to define this moment not by its pain but by what we bring to the world in this moment and beyond. 

As a class, we also wish to honor that this is a tipping moment in the story of our lineage. We are the first class of ordinees most of whom began our ALEPH training after the death of Reb Zalman, of blessed memory. Those who follow us will learn from his words and his stories and not from his physical presence. And yet we have drawn from his deep reservoir of inspiration and will continue to do so. And so the legacy of our teacher, the teacher of our teachers, accompanies us into the future. 

“Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav used to say:
Friends do not despair
For a difficult time has come upon us,
Joy must fill the air.
We must not lose our faith in living,
We must not despair.
For a difficult time is upon us,
Joy must fill the air.”

–Reb Zalman 
Recorded in Lex Hixon, Conversations in the Spirit: Lex Hixon’s WBAI ‘In the Spirit’ Interviews: A Chronicle of the Seventies Spiritual Revolution (2016). Click to hear the recording of this song.