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We have to confront the fact that American Judaism has a positivity bias that shames people into looking for inspiration (Judaism is about finding joy!) when they should be seeking help and healing. https://twitter.com/joshgraj/status/1342154438249689088
This is also the big blind spot with everything having to be “meaningful” without deciding what that means. Largely, it never intends looking the brokenness of our lives in the eyes through the lenses of our traditions and saying “I see you now. What are you hear to reach me?”
Programs and institutions which lean on ethnic & cultural notions of Jewishness are poorly suited for this kind of work. Suffering is usually processed in the collective sense, probably joy and celebration as well. The sheer volume of personal despair of our moment can break this
Anything that is being funded to bring Jews together under whatever modality must now incorporate opportunities to share and process individual and collective trauma. Stop trying to entertain us!
Heschel in ‘63: “The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation...
To be entertained is a passive state—it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living...
Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.”
It doesn’t have to be goth, it just can’t be gossamer. It doesn’t have to be therapy, but it can be therapeutic.
