Mi-shenichnas Adar, marbim b’simchah. When the month of Adar begins, one increases in joy.
Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 29a
Mitzvah g’dolah l’hiyot b’simchah tamid. It is a great mitzvah to be joyful, always.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlov, Likutei Moharan II: 24
How do we nurture simchah through spiritual practice – especially in such challenging times, when joy seems hard, maybe even unjust, to access?
Nachman describes simchah as emerging from our capacity to develop greater awareness of the deeper truth of our lives, to “reveal” that which previously had been “concealed” from us:
At every stage in a person’s spiritual growth, there is an aspect of Torah and mitzvot which is ‘revealed’ to him – a level he can understand and practice – and then there is a higher level that is as yet ‘concealed.’ Through prayer, the level that was previously ‘concealed’ becomes ‘revealed,’ leaving an even higher ‘concealed’ level to aspire to. Simchah is when one constantly advances from level to level, turning the ‘concealed’ into the ‘revealed’.¹
For Rabbi Nachman, simchah/joy is not a sentiment synonymous with happiness, but rather a level of spiritual awareness, waking up to the underlying interconnectedness of all. This may help us understand the teaching of Ben Zoma in Pirkei Avot “eyzehu ashir? Ha-sameach b’chelko; “Who is rich? One who rejoices in one’s portion.”²
We can understand chelek/”portion” here to mean our unique perception of what is true in this moment, and understanding it as fundamentally connected to all other perceptions. When we surrender judgment and comparison, and simply attend to and “rejoice” in this breath, this thought, this feeling, this sensation, this moment, we are ashir/rich; we experience a sense of fullness and wholeness. We have everything we need in this moment.
Rabbi Nachman illustrates this kind of simchah in a tale about a shoemaker described as tam (“simple,” unperturbed by complexity and separation) who always rejoiced in every experience even though he was inexpert at his craft, made inferior products, and earned less money than his competitors. When his wife pointed out to him how much better the other shoemakers were doing, he replied, “What do I care about that? That is their work, and this is my work! Why must we think about others? … As long as I make a clear profit, what do I care?’ He was thus always filled with joy and happiness.”³
This kind of simchah/joy born of deep connection to self and others can transform the energy of challenging thoughts and emotions such as pain, anger, shame and guilt. The Ba’al Shem Tov is said to have taught a parable in which the anger of a king is dispelled when his beloved child comes into his presence:
For even if the king is in a state of anger, the very sight of his precious child brings him joy and delight. The anger dissipates of its own, and obviously never returns, all the time his son stands before him, as is human nature. The child, therefore, has no worries, and enters at any time he so wishes and exudes praise without end, for he knows that this brings the king, his father, joy and delight.
Why is it this way? Why do anger and fury disappear when joy and love enter? Where do they go? Yes, this is human nature, but nevertheless, we must try to understand how and why. But this is the power of love and joy: When they prevail, they cause anger and fury to ascend upward toward their root. This is part of the secret knowledge, that these forces of anger and strict judgment are mollified only when they reach their origin, since at its origin, all is pure goodness. It comes out that anger and fury are healed and mollified through love and joy.⁴
Mindfulness does not mean eschewing sadness or anxiety to practice simchah. To the contrary, it involves embracing challenging emotions, thought patterns and narratives with compassion, thereby transforming the energy within them to yield the spiritual state of simchah. Experiencing and cultivating a sense of deep relation to others and to ourselves helps relieve our constrictions and allow the chiyut/life force within them to shift and flow in its proper, more wholesome and holy direction.
We can assist in this process not by trying to compel ourselves to be “happy,” but by understanding our grief, sadness, and pain as portals to profound connection — what Rabbi Jay Michelson aptly describes as “unhappy happiness,”⁵ the simchah/joy born of a sense of spiritual connection.⁶ We don’t have to feel “happy” to experience “joy.”
In any moment of any day, we can choose to engage in “awareness practice,” stepping up, as it were, to the balcony of the mind and simply witnessing there, without judgment, the thoughts and feelings swirling below. From this “God’s eye perspective,” the narratives forming in the mind lose their power, and we intuitively “remember” the infinitely larger context in which we live and of which we are a precious, inseparable part.
As we move into Adar in these deeply unsettling and challenging times, may we find and nurture simchah in the essential, foundational truth that we are profoundly, inextricably connected in an unfathomable web of life energy through time and space.
¹ Likutei Moharan I, 22:9.
² Mishnah Avot 4:1.
³ “The Sophisticate and the Simpleton,” in Rabbi Nachman’s Stories, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (Breslov Research Institute: 1983), p. 168-173.
⁴ Tzava’at Harivash 132.
⁵ Jay Michelson, “What Rabbi Nachman and Pharrell Have in Common,” The Forward, August 16, 2014.
⁶ See David Brooks, “The Difference Between Happiness and Joy,” New York Times, May 7, 2019: “Happiness usually involves a victory for the self. Joy tends to involve the transcendence of self. Happiness comes from accomplishments. Joy comes when your heart is in another. Joy comes after years of changing diapers, driving to practice, worrying at night, dancing in the kitchen, playing in the yard and just sitting quietly together watching TV. Joy is the present that life gives you as you give away your gifts.”