Dear Friends,
This year at the Kaiserman JCC, we are focusing on the value of joy. Highlighting joy feels both meaningful and challenging in a world that often feels unsettled, wars continue, antisemitism is rising, immigration laws shift, and uncertainty seems constant. And yet, I find myself looking forward to the holiday: being with family, cooking my daughter’s favorite foods, and singing our traditional songs.
This tension, wanting to feel joy while feeling fear, is deeply human. Mixed emotions can feel confusing, even paralyzing, but modern psychology shows that positive and negative emotions can coexist. Feeling fear does not negate joy, and joy does not erase fear. Author and scholar, Arthur Brooks notes that this internal conflict, while exhausting, can also deepen our understanding and sense of meaning.
Our tradition seems to have understood this long ago. Psalms tells us to “Serve God with fear, and rejoice with trembling,” pairing awe with joy. The Talmud recounts how Talmudic sage Abaye expressed great joy even during serious prayer, showing that emotions do not need to be exclusive. Holding both, what psychologists call dialectical thinking, allows us to live more honestly and fully.
There is value in this complexity. Just as red anemones bloom vibrantly in landscapes marked by pain, our emotional lives blend joy and sorrow, hope and fear. Mixed emotions can enrich ritual, too. During the Seder, personal and inherited stories of oppression, migration, and survival allow us to feel both fear and redemption, making the holiday alive and meaningful.
This year, perhaps the goal is not to eliminate mixed emotions, but to embrace them. To allow joy, even when it trembles, and to acknowledge fear without letting it overshadow everything else. A meaningful life, and a meaningful holiday, is not emotionally simple, but fully lived.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Moriah SimonHazani
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