How to Laugh, Reflect, and Embrace Positivity in Judaism | Rabbi Levine on Yom Kippur

How to Laugh, Reflect, and Embrace Positivity in Judaism

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Darren Levine is the founding rabbi of Tamid, The Downtown Synagogue in New York City, which is guided by Positive Judaism. In an open letter earlier this year, Levine defined Positive Judaism as a spiritual life that "expands the mind, deepens personal character, strengthens community, improves the world, and adds joy and optimism to everyday living." Because of pop-culture stereotypes and the Jewish history persecution, people may not instantly think that Judaism and positivity are in sync, but Levine contents that joy and hope have been at the heart of the Jewish mindset for 3,000 years. You can choose to look at history with pessimism and negativity, says Levine, or you can instead find beauty in brokenness and turn it into jokes, positive emotion, and wisdom. "In the 21st century, it is the People that will or will not choose to be Jewish... Historical memory, Israel, the threat of anti-semitism and are not strong enough motivators for Jewish engagement. We need something new and serious and Positive Judaism is one new construct." Here, Levine shares a timely joke for Yom Kippur, and shares a teaching about hope and perspective.

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DARREN LEVINE:

Darren Levine is the founding rabbi of Tamid and first set the vision for the synagogue in 2011. He cares deeply about building community, moral education, and creative Jewish expression. He holds Rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and has a Doctorate in Pastoral Psychology from the Post Graduate Center for Mental Health.

Levine's His academic and pastoral interests rest at the intersection of psychology and religion and moral education. He has served the Jewish Community Project in Lower Manhattan and Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City. He’s done international relief work in Israel and Africa, served a High Holiday pulpit in South Africa, worked for over 10 years as Jewish Camps for the Reform Movement and served as a Chaplain in the US Army.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Darren Levine: Humor relates directly to positive of Judaism because humor is one of the 24 strengths in the category in the inventory of strengths and characteristics. We know that humor, which makes us laugh and we desire to be around people who are funny because it raises our senses of positive emotion, and that adds a lot of value. The U.S. Open and Yom Kippur generally fall during the same season of time. Yom Kippur is the day of forgiveness. It happens in the very early fall and the U.S. Open happens in the late summer to early fall and it just so happened that one year the men’s final and Yom Kippur happened on the same exact day. And so this child said to his father, “Dad, you know I can’t miss the U.S. Open. It’s the most important tennis match of the entire year.” And the father said, “Well, that’s what video recordings are for.” And the child said, “You mean we can tape Yom Kippur?”

We can always choose to live with a pessimistic mindset. A lot of people ask: Judaism and positivity, can they sync together? And they can, despite the fact that individuals have faced anti-Semitism and oppression and there have been many times in Jewish history, like the pogroms when Jewish individuals and Jewish communities were oppressed and that is true for lots of different groups. But at the core of religious thought it is about resilience and it is about hope, it’s about joy, it’s about positive living, it’s about spirituality, deepening relationships and seeking to have a positive impact on one’s life, on their community and their family and in the world.

Hatikvah is the Jewish national anthem. Hatikvah means 'the hope' and at the core of the Jewish mindset for 3000 years has been hope. I’ll tell you a story about hope, which is attributed to the Maggid of Dubno. Maggid of Dubno tells a story of a king who had a perfect diamond and the king loved this diamond and he would marvel at this diamond every single night. But one day he dropped this diamond and when he picked it up he noticed that there was a crack from the crown to the base of this diamond and the king was crestfallen. He called out to all of the master craftsman in the entire kingdom to come and see if they could repair this, but one after the other said to the king, “King, once a crack is in a diamond it cannot be repaired.”

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