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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Happiness in the Jewish Perspective
37 Plays3 years ago
While the concept of happiness is obviously not unique to Judaism, Jewish tradition and Jewish law offer a unique perspective on the many forms and meanings of happiness in human life and society.
In today’s episode of Interactions, we hear from Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on the meaning and measure of happiness in the Jewish tradition.
"There is a very beautiful image of happiness as being at one with the universe, but that is not the Jewish way," says Rabbi Sacks. "Judaism is a religion of active engagement with the world driven by the cognitive dissonance between the world that is and the world that ought to be."
What insights on happiness does the ancient wisdom of Judaism have to offer? Find out in today's episode.
To learn more, view the original video on our YouTube channel and explore other new publications from the Center for the Study of Law and Religion in our book brochure.
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Transcript
Introduction to Interactions Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Interactions, a podcast about law and religion and how they interact in the world around us.
Judaism's Unique Take on Happiness
00:00:16
Speaker
What is happiness and what role does it play in our lives? While the concept of happiness is obviously not unique to Judaism, Jewish tradition and Jewish law offer a unique perspective on the many forms and meanings of happiness in human life and society.
Role of Happiness in Jewish Tradition
00:00:36
Speaker
In today's episode of Interactions, we hear from Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on the meaning and measure of happiness in the Jewish tradition.
00:00:48
Speaker
Rabbi Sacks was a renowned theologian and public intellectual in the modern Orthodox tradition, serving as the chief rabbi in the UK for over 20 years. I think we can say this, that there is a very, very beautiful image of happiness as being at one with the universe.
00:01:09
Speaker
But that is not the Jewish way. In Judaism, at least in the mainstream, Judaism is a religion of active engagement with the world, driven by the cognitive dissonance between the world that is and the world that ought to be.
Is Happiness Personal or Political?
00:01:27
Speaker
Is happiness a personal or a political issue? And is it possible that happiness is, in fact, one of the most pressing issues of our times? Find out in today's episode. I'm Janet Metzger, and this is Happiness in the Jewish Perspective by Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
00:02:00
Speaker
Friends, David asks, am I correct? To which the answer is an unequivocal yes and no. But David, you have set us on the right path because you have told us that you're unhappy. And for a Jew to be happy is to have something to be unhappy about.
00:02:31
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If I were to sum up purely philosophically for a moment, the Jewish attitude to happiness, I would say it is this.
Stories Illustrating Jewish Happiness
00:02:42
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It is Max Goldberg.
00:02:45
Speaker
who in his seventies suffers a problem with his heart, is immediately rushed into the hospital that I am told is the best in the United States, Massachusetts, general. He is there for seven days. And after seven days in this magnificent hospital, he checks himself out
00:03:04
Speaker
and goes to a very rundown Jewish hospital in New York's Lower East Side. And the doctor is just fascinated to know why did he leave this magnificent hospital to come to this rundown place? And he says, Goldberg, tell me, Goldberg, what was the matter there, the doctors? Didn't they understand your condition? And Goldberg says, the doctors double Einstein's. About the doctors, I can't complain.
00:03:32
Speaker
Was it the nurses, didn't they look after you? About the nurses, angels in human form. About the nurses, I can't complain. So what was it, Goldberg? The food, didn't you like the food? Goldberg said, the food, manna from heaven. About the food, I can't complain. So Goldberg, why did you leave there and come here? And Goldberg with a big smile says, because here I can complain.
00:04:03
Speaker
All of this leads a French contemporary scholar, Esther Ben Bassa, I think her name is, to write a book about contemporary Jewish life entitled, published earlier this year, Suffering as Identity.
00:04:24
Speaker
And it is that very negative approach to life, which has dominated Jewish life in recent decades, not unsurprisingly after two centuries of antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust. But my latest book, Future Tense, actually says this is the wrong road to go down.
00:04:47
Speaker
I should say before I say anything else, if heaven is anything like the Emory University Center for Law and Religion, I will be happy in the world to come. So John, thank you for all you've done for it.
00:05:05
Speaker
It's very interesting. The first word of the book of Psalms is ashrey, which means happy. But it's a very interesting word. There's no English equivalent because ashrey is a plural construct. It doesn't mean happy. It means these are the happinesses of.
00:05:24
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as if in that first word already to hint to us that there may be many forms of happiness in Judaism.
Life, Liberty, and Holiness vs. Happiness
00:05:34
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And there are indeed. And I'm only going to look at three. One, which I think David will meet you halfway, a form of happiness, or at least of existence in Judaism, that is radically different
00:05:49
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from the kind of life that we hear from the Dalai Lama. That is the first. The second will be one that is very similar to that advocated by the Dalai Lama and the third will be one on which I believe our various traditions can converge, as it were, from different starting points.
00:06:10
Speaker
So let me begin by saying, and of course David is right, happiness is not the core concept in Judaism. We do not hold like Aristotle that it is that at which all things aim. In Judaism, we would sum up Judaism as life, liberty, and the pursuit of holiness.
00:06:30
Speaker
not happiness. And that, incidentally, is not an unsound way of proceeding because, as I mentioned yesterday, as many thinkers have realized, from Aristotle to what's Mr. Flo Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, yeah?
00:06:47
Speaker
Mr. Peake experiences, you do not arrive at happiness by pursuing it directly. And that is how Maimonides defines, in the 10th chapter of Hilch's Tuva, what is Ha'ovid et ashem e'avah, somebody who serves God with love, in his fine words, ose'met, mibne'she'u'emet, he does what is right because it is right, v'sovat'vavav, and the happiness will come.
00:07:14
Speaker
So happiness is part of Judaism, but it is not that at which we aim.
Biblical Struggles and Jewish Happiness Views
00:07:19
Speaker
Now the first thing that is very obvious is that you read the Bible, happiness is not something you necessarily associate with the biblical heroes. The heroes of the religious imagination in Judaism, they struggle, they wrestle, they argue, they contend. They fight with the people for the sake of God. They fight with God for the sake of the people. At least four biblical heroes pray to God
00:07:44
Speaker
to die, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Jonah, and of course Job likewise. The figures of the Bible, no exile and no persecution, they no defeat, but they no happiness, all too rarely. Nowhere is there a more ironic word in Hebrew than the name of the first Jewish child, Isaac.
00:08:14
Speaker
The Hebrew means Yitzhak, he will laugh. And yet, Isaac's life is not full of laughter. As a child, he sees a father who is prepared to sacrifice him. As a father himself, he sees his two sons engaged in sibling rivalry and is deceived by one of them. So in Judaism, happiness,
00:08:42
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is at the end of long and winding roads.
00:08:46
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when in the 20th century the late Rabbi Soloveitch spoke of Jewish life. He spoke of it as thesis and antithesis without the mediating synthesis. When a contemporary Talmudic scholar, Adin Steinzals wrote a book about Jewish life, he called it Strife of the Spirit. The Talmud says that sages have no rest, neither in this world nor the next. So I think we can say this.
00:09:15
Speaker
that there is a very, very beautiful image of happiness as being at one with the universe. But that is not the Jewish way. In Judaism, at least in the mainstream, Judaism is a religion of active engagement with the world, driven by the cognitive dissonance between the world that is
00:09:36
Speaker
and the world that ought to be. Judaism lives in that distance.
Abraham's Life: Delayed Happiness
00:09:41
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We live in this world, but we know just how far from the ideal it is, and all our actions are intended to reduce that distance between the is and the ought. However, I want to say this, that there is a kind of happiness in all of this. Think of Abraham, the grandfather of the world's three great
00:10:06
Speaker
Abrahamic monotheism, think of his life. He has to tear himself away from everything that makes somebody feel at home in the world. He has to leave behind his land, his birthplace, his father's house, and travel to, says God, the land which I will show you. As soon as he arrives in the land, there's a famine and he has to leave. Twice, his life is in danger and Sarah has to pretend she's his sister rather than his wife because he's afraid they'll kill him.
00:10:33
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God promises him children as many as the stars of the sky as the grains of sand on the seashore. He has to wait till he's an old man before he has even one child.
00:10:46
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God promises, come and hital ech par, it's low, carol, ech vag, ye'll write, ne'er, arise, walk through the land, the length, the breadth thereof, I give it all to you. And when Sarah dies, he does not have one square inch that he can call his own in which to bury her, and he has to pay an inflated price for the burial plot. And yet, the end of his life, the Bible says,
00:11:14
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And Abraham died of good old age, zakenva saver, old and satisfied with life.
Struggle and Engagement in Happiness
00:11:24
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One of the most serene deaths in the Bible. There is a kind of happiness in all this. It is not happiness written by Johann Sebastian Bach. This is happiness.
00:11:42
Speaker
at which Beethoven arrived at the very end of his life in those late string quartets. Or to take a non-musical analogy, you know when I went to study philosophy at Cambridge, the invisible hero, he died more than a decade earlier, was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Now Wittgenstein was a serious depressive. Three of his siblings
00:12:12
Speaker
committed suicide. His whole life was spent in anguish and self-doubt. He once said to Bertram Russell, Russell, tell me, am I a complete idiot or not? If I'm a complete idiot, I'll study aeronautical engineering.
00:12:29
Speaker
If I'm not, I'll study philosophy. I mean, you know, I love Bertrand Russell, you know, he was so un-Jewish, you know. Bertrand Russell once said about G.E. Moore, I only once heard G.E. Moore tell a lie. And that's when I asked him, Moore, have you ever told a lie? And he said, yes.
00:12:49
Speaker
Sorry, okay. That's what you get by studying philosophy. Anyway, so Wittgenstein, you know, even to think straight, has to leave Cambridge, go to a little fjord in Norway, in total isolation. This man, I actually had my room in Cambridge, oh, just above his doctor's surgery where he died, Wittgenstein's last words,
00:13:16
Speaker
Well, tell them I've had a wonderful life. Can you understand? I think
Virtue and Balance vs. Struggle-Based Happiness
00:13:22
Speaker
one can. So that is the first kind of happiness that I associate with Judaism, which is so radically unlike the serene Buddhist happiness. It is the happiness, not of being a piece in the universe, but the happiness that comes from challenge, struggle, sometimes sacrifice for high ideals, a life that has its setbacks and its moments of despair,
00:13:45
Speaker
those moments that you hear so absolutely in Moses, in Jeremiah, the point, you know, for me as a Jew, the point in the New Testament that that speaks most closely as a Jew is the last words of Jesus when he is quoting the Targum, the Aramaic translation of Psalm 22, Eli, Eli, lama, zavach tanig, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's a really Jewish moment.
00:14:13
Speaker
You find God in the very act of asking, of doubting, of questioning. And there is, I think, a certain kind of, it's what Herbert Schneider once famously called sacred discontent. Anyone know of a guy called Bob Geldof who used to do this? You come across this man?
00:14:37
Speaker
Oh, sorry, you don't want the Bible according to Bob. All right, we'll move on. Anyway, so there it is. So there is, I think, fulfillment, vividness, passion in the struggle, and moments of exhilaration. You hear that exhilaration in the song, the Israelites sing as they cross the Red Sea. And that is, I think, a certain kind of happiness in Judaism. Happiness is struggle. It comes.
00:15:07
Speaker
In that last, in those last moments of life where you look back and you say, you know, in the words of Rabbi Tarafin, it is not for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it, from having taken part in this struggle, knowing that you struggled in a noble cause. That's happiness one. We'll be right back after the break.
00:15:50
Speaker
High Interactions Listeners, this is Justin Lateral at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. If you liked this episode and want to learn more about the interactions of law and religion around the world, check out the link to our book brochure in the podcast description.
00:16:05
Speaker
There you'll find over 40 new titles like God and the Illegal Aliens by Robert Heimberger and Michael Perry's new book on human rights, democracy, and constitutionalism. Each title includes a short description and a link to buy the book online. Thanks for listening to Interactions.
00:16:42
Speaker
There is a second kind of happiness in Judaism, and I call this the happiness of the wisdom tradition in Judaism. The happiness you find in the book of Proverbs and some of the Psalms and so on and so forth. And that kind of happiness comes closest to the kind of happiness
00:16:59
Speaker
of which the Dalai Lama speaks, and with shaded variations, the kind of happiness at which the various strands of the Greek philosophical tradition also spoke. That is a happiness of balance, of virtue, of compassion, of living well and faring well. That kind of osha, that kind of osha is the happiness of one who is good, who does good, who has been blessed in life,
Ecclesiastes on Self-Centeredness and Unhappiness
00:17:28
Speaker
and who has been held in high regard. And that is the happiness set forth for us in Psalm 1. Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of markers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree.
00:17:48
Speaker
planted by streams of water, which yields fruit in its season, whose leaf does not wither, whatever he does prospers." That's happiness as rootedness. You know, there's something very interesting in Hebrew, the word secular. Where does the word secular come from? Seculum, meaning this worldly. Would that be about right? In Hebrew, the word for secular is chol.
00:18:13
Speaker
And whole is the Hebrew for sand. Why? Because sand gets blown by the wind.
00:18:20
Speaker
You're not rooted anywhere. And that is exactly what Psalm 1 says. Lokein hareshra'in, the wicked aren't like the righteous. Ki'in kamot sashatit van ooroch, they're like the chaff that the wind blows away. So there's happiness as rootedness and a giving forth fruit and all that kind of thing. And that is the happiness of the wisdom tradition. Of course, the most remarkable account, very complex,
00:18:46
Speaker
account of this kind of happiness, it is challenging and it is very subversive, is the happiness mentioned in the book, which you quoted, the book of Cohelet of Ecclesiastes. Who is Ecclesiastes? The man who has everything. He has a wardrobe full of Armani suits, a garage full of Lamborghinis. He does the shopping in the Lamborghini. He has a second home in the south and front, you name it. What else do you have to have in order to be?
00:19:16
Speaker
Ecclesiastes, and of course, as you will know, having a garage full of Lamborghinis yourself, that that does not buy you happiness. And there he is saying, you know, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless. And I just want to
00:19:32
Speaker
I'll be tiny bit homiletical here because let's do a little bit of stuff that actually works in life. I once was able to decode Ecclesiastes because when I was a student in 1968 and for the first time I met a man who had great influence on my life, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, and I was just about to go in to see him and his followers told me a lovely story which I share with you.
00:20:00
Speaker
Somebody had written to the rubber. You know, he was a great holy man. Somebody had written to the rubber. I need the rubber's help. I am deeply depressed. I can hardly find the will to go on living. I pray and I am not moved. I fulfill the commands and yet I feel no satisfaction. I need the rubber's help.
00:20:22
Speaker
And the rabbi who used, before he was a leader of the Jewish people, ran a publishing house, and so was used to using typographical symbols, sent him the most brilliant reply, and it did not use a single word. He simply ringed the first word in every sentence. The first word in every sentence was I.
00:20:46
Speaker
If you want to know why you're miserable, because you start every sentence with the word I. And it's exactly as John said yesterday, the truth is, as Victor Frankl always used to say in the name of Kieger God, the daughter happiness opens outward.
Happiness from Virtues Across Traditions
00:21:06
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You have to abandon the I and focus on the you, on the other.
00:21:13
Speaker
And if you actually look, and this gets a little bit diluted in English, but if you look at the Hebrew of the first two chapters of the book of Ecclesiastes, there is no other book in the Bible that uses the first person singular so much.
00:21:30
Speaker
Banitili, Asitili, Carnitili, each one of those is a double I. I made for myself, I bought for myself, I acquired for myself, I planted for myself. It's all for myself. And that is why he does not find happiness.
00:21:47
Speaker
And eventually, exactly as you said, David, he finds happiness in the now, in love, in work. Sweet is the sleep of a laboring man, rejoiced with the woman you've taken. He even finds a bit of a peculiar happiness in eating and drinking, and a touch of the Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society.
00:22:13
Speaker
Carpe diem, rejoicing your creator in the days of your youth, etc., etc. So that is the wisdom tradition. It is the most universal. It is there in ancient Egyptian wisdom literature. It's in the whole philosophical tradition of the Greek.
00:22:31
Speaker
Greeks in different ways in Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and others, and almost all the great religious traditions. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Some are more this worldly, others are less this worldly, but that is the life of balance and beauty and goodness and virtue and order and inner peace, which is the exact opposite of the first kind of happiness, which is a life of struggle and passion.
Social Happiness through Relationships
00:22:59
Speaker
And that is another version of happiness in Judaism. Do not believe that there is only one way to live a good and happy life, even within a single tradition. So that's number two. And finally, number three, the point that I just hinted at yesterday, the point where I think we can converge whatever our tradition. And that is what I called social happiness.
00:23:30
Speaker
And it is far too little spoken about nowadays. This is a rare idea. And this comes from the concept of covenant. Social happiness comes from the concept of covenant. And covenant itself comes out of the paradox set forth with beautiful clarity in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. On the one hand,
00:24:00
Speaker
The human being is supremely valuable. Every one of us, regardless of color, class, culture, gender, every one of us is in the image and likeness of God. This I think the singular most single radical
00:24:20
Speaker
Assertion of monotheism as if discovering God singular and alone, humanity found the human person singular and alone. Only in monotheism do you get the birth of the individual as having ultimate significance. Set against that,
00:24:43
Speaker
is, and again in Hebrew this is, it's like a discord in the middle of the Mozart symphony. Because we have had Genesis one and God saw that it was good and God saw that it was good and suddenly, seven times, and suddenly in Genesis two we hear the words not good. The words not good only appear twice in the whole of the Pentateuch. What is not good?
00:25:08
Speaker
it is not good for man to be alone. So on the one hand, this almost infinite dignity of the human individual, but on the other hand, the inadequacy of the human individual.
00:25:21
Speaker
And out of that tension, the whole human drama, as conceived by Judaism, that the whole drama is generated by that one single paradox, which means, to sum up what the problem is, how do we construct relationships of trust that are not relationships of dominance?
00:25:45
Speaker
How do we establish human bonds based on the recognition of the independence and integrity of the other?
00:25:54
Speaker
And that is the problem whose solution is covenant. Covenant is a moral commitment in which two individuals or more, each respecting the dignity and independence of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust to do together what neither can do alone. And the paradigm case of that is marriage.
00:26:16
Speaker
And the most daring, really audacious proposition of the Hebrew Bible is that the relationship between God and humanity is just that, the relationship of a marriage. It sounds sacrilegious, blasphemous. What is there that God cannot do alone? But there is, of course, one thing God cannot do alone, which is to live within the human heart.
00:26:46
Speaker
For that, he needs our partnership. And this generates a third form of happiness, which is not the struggle, form one. It's not being at peace with yourself, form two. This form of happiness is all about relationships. The quality and depth of our relationships with the other
00:27:15
Speaker
with the human other and the divine other which is God. And the Bible sees this kind of happiness, not just as a personal matter, but essential to the health of the society as a whole.
Happiness, Society, and Stability
00:27:31
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In other words, a society is made by the extent to which husbands and wives, parents and children, communities, and ultimately a whole society can achieve that happiness based on relationships of mutual respect and mutual responsibility. And the Bible says something astonishing
00:27:53
Speaker
It really is astonishing. You kind of miss it if you're not concentrating. And here it is. We have two passages of curses in the mosaic books. One at the end of
00:28:06
Speaker
Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 26, the other towards the end of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 28. Terrifying, terrifying literature of curses. The one in Leviticus happens because of national apostasy. You reject me, says God, you abandon me, you treat me negligently. So I will abandon you.
00:28:33
Speaker
That's big time national apostasy. What is remarkable about Deuteronomy is there's no apostasy. The only reason the curses happen is, because you did not serve God with joy, and gladness of heart may rove coal out of the abundance of all good things.
00:29:02
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It is a stunning insight. A society that loses the art of happiness is a society on the brink of decline. And that makes happiness a social, and in the broadest possible sense, a political issue.
Podcast Conclusion and Credits
00:29:29
Speaker
That was Happiness in the Jewish Perspective by Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. You can watch the full video by following the link in the episode description. Canopy Forum and the Interactions Podcast are distributed by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and produced by Anna Knudsen. I am your narrator, Janet Metzger.
00:29:55
Speaker
You can follow Canopy Forum on Twitter or Facebook, and subscribe to Interactions on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening.