The following sermon was given by Rabbi Ariana Katz at Hinenu on September 15, 2023 on erev Rosh HaShanah
Tell me something good!
Shanah tovah. Let’s try it again. I know its cheesy but its such a good song!!
Tell me something good! Tell me that you love me, yeahhhhh.
Tell me that you like it, yeah
Here are some ways Jewish tradition knows that pleasure is GOOD:
The first time you see a fruit tree flower in the month of Nisan, you have a chance to say this very rare special blessing:
Blessed are You Adonai our God, Seed of the universe, Who has made nothing lacking in Their world, and created in it goodly creatures and goodly trees to give human beings pleasure.
The world, created in fullness, big bang’ed into fullness, was meant to have good smells and beautiful flowers in it. A world, without pleasure, would be lacking.
When a child begins learning their aleph-bet, many have the practice of covering the letters in honey, or making Hebrew letters out of sweets.
Letters, so full of potential and mystical power they existed before creation happened. Letters that we pray our children will combine and recombine to learn more Torah from. Cover it all in honey, lift up the sweetness that is getting to learn Torah. What could be better?
The Leviathan, created on the fifth day of creation, plays–misachek, with the Holy One.
According to the Psalmist a giant sea monster that represents the balance of creation and destruction spends its days playing Marco Polo with God (1).
The world was created in seven days. And on the seventh day God rested.
And on Shabbat we move toward what brings Oneg Shabbat, delight in the Sabbath. Song, community, good food, Torah study, intimacy with beloveds, rest, a break from toil, from the act of creation. For the world to be complete, it must have rest and delight in it.
This Rosh HaShanah I want to say one thing to you: It is good to feel pleasure. Let’s feel more of it.
I believe with perfect faith that we were put into this world to do good, and to experience pleasure. And our ancestors agree with me, wouldn’t you say?
Now a pause–because if it took all you could to tune in or come to services today, if finding pleasure is the last thing on your mind and survival is the first and only, there is nothing wrong with you. Not feeling pleasure doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. Please know that I want to give you permission to move toward things that bring you comfort…and pleasure if you’re able.
The pleasure principle in Judaism: the Divine, your ancestors, the Universe, they all want you to have joy, be comfortable, feel delight and ease, have satisfying sex, make art, learn Torah, eat good food. The world was created for us to delight in it, and to take care of. Not one without the other. In fact, feeling pleasure helps us find something to fight for.
The instinct to limit our pleasure, our full delight, to feel shame about what brings pleasure and goodness into the world…while you know I’m not in the business of telling you what God wants–I’ll just say, that’s not from the Holy One. We live in a world full of such body shame, sex shame, homophobia, transphobia, racism, fat phobia, abelism, that just waking up in the morning is enough to feel ashamed for existing. So you–each of you, any time you can delight in the beauty of Creation, that is revolutionary.
One of the great sages of our time, Adrienne Marie Brown, (who some of us got to see in 5783 at the Waverly Book Festival), wrote in her book “Pleasure Activism” about what that idea is:
“Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy. Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve pleasure and that our social structures must reflect this.
“In this moment,” she continues, “we must prioritize the pleasure of those most impacted by oppression.”
Because, friends, denying yourself simple and complex pleasures does not fuel the revolution, it acts as the forces against which you organize. Film maker, activist, and professor Toni Cade Bambara taught that “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” Why would we fight for a world that is boring, colorless, joyless, or fat free? Why would we join in a fight like that either?
And it is not just about transforming the world–for our internal liberation, our pleasure matters. Ingrid LaFleur, curator, design innovationist, pleasure activist and Afrofuturist, teaches that “For oppressed people to intentionally cultivate pleasure is an act of resistance.” You–yes you, reaching toward feeling good, that is holy.
Yetzer–inclination, will. The rabbinic imagination understands that we have the yetzer hatov, the good inclination that brings us to do good in the world, kindness, generosity, and the yetzer hara, the wicked instinct that causes us to be competitive, cause harm, be cruel. One day (2), our sages were sitting around, and as they often do they were lamenting the yetzer hara. It caused idol worship, that ultimately destroyed the Temple, and burned its Sanctuary, and murdered all the righteous ones, and caused the Jewish people to be exiled from their land. “And still” they said, “it dances among us! It still affects us! HaShem, did you give us the yetzer hara so we could get reward for overcoming it? We don’t want it, and we don’t want those rewards. Not worth it!”
So the prophet Zecharia says, “alright boys, then capture and throw the yetzer hara into this lead pot. No one will be able to hear its screams!” Damn!
“But be careful,” he says, “if you kill the yetzer hara, the world will be destroyed because there will be no desire to procreate, and there will be no more people.”
The Sages agree that yes, that would be a problem, so they keep the yetzer imprisoned in the pot.
And do you know what happened? Not a single egg was laid throughout the land of Yisrael (remember earlier this spring, trying to find an affordable egg?) Since the inclination to reproduce was quashed, the chickens stopped laying eggs.
Without the yetzer hara, the drive for pleasure, the world is devoid of creation. Without the edge that brings competition, that brings creativity, there is no art, there is no sex, there is no birth, there are no scrambled eggs.
Now this story goes on to take, as so many rabbinic tales do, a frustrating ableist turn with what they do with the yetzer. So you know, caution dear reader.
This story speaks to the wish to not have to balance our yetzer hatov and our yetzer hara, wouldn’t it be easier to lock it all away? To be a beige unfeeling automaton? But Judaism happens in the places where we are alive. The places where birth and death and sex and heartbreak and poetry and Torah are opened up before us, where we have to decide right action and ethical behavior in the face of so much opportunity. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches that “The faith of the Jew is not a way out of this world, but a way of being within and above this world; not to reject but to surpass civilization.”
Because that’s the rub, if you will. Pursuing a life of pleasure does not mean avoiding hard work. Accountability and work are not what we need to push away, as pleasure activists. Again Heschel teaches us that labor is good, it is toil that we cannot wait to be free of. He says:
Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Labor is not only the destiny of man; it is endowed with divine dignity. However, after he ate of the tree of knowledge he was condemned to toil, not only to labor “In toil shall thou eat…all the days of thy life” (Genesis 3:17). Labor is a blessing, toil is the misery of man.”
(Marxists, this is the point where you lean over to your comrade and start talking about labor and value.)
The pleasure filled Olam HaZeh–this world, that we are dreaming is a beautiful world of accountability. Where each of us move toward the life giving things that bring joy and pleasure not just for us, but for one another. Because it is not just about having time to write and play music, to kiss your lover on a bench, to teach your child how to skateboard. Pleasure comes from repairing places where there has been rupture between people. When we are called in to understand how we have caused hurt, and given a chance to understand ourselves more deeply and grow. Teshuva, though sometimes painful, is also oneg, also worthy of delight.
Pleasure comes when we know everyone on our block has enough food to eat for dinner, when our neighbors won’t face eviction for jacked up water bills, when trash incinerators won’t poison the air for a swath of zipcodes in our city. Knowing that our actions are aligned with our values brings pleasure. Organizing care, mobilizing for justice, winning, or dreaming of winning, that too is pleasure.
Again, Brown teaches:
“...so many of us have been trained into the delusion that we must accumulate excess, even at the cost of vast inequality, in order to view our lives as complete or successful.
A central aspect of pleasure activism is tapping into the natural abundance that exists within and between us, and between our species and this planet. Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.”
Pleasure transforms the world. Anyone who has shifted their Shabbat observance knows that as soon as you start orienting your week toward Shabbes, it all changes. The smell of food filling the house, the knowledge that the hard boundary of time before and beyond the lighting of candles that the world will stop, the glow the house takes on when candles are lit, the crumbs that fill the table immediately after breaking in to challah, the ease that fills your body when nothing has to be done next.
Orienting our lives toward Shabbat helps clarify our focus on the world we are yearning for. Pleasure helps us believe in a world worth fighting for, a world of enoughness, of abundance, of delight.
What is a greater example of moving toward pleasure than Shabbat? Light some candles, drink some wine or your favorite grape juice, move into that great Palace of Time (3), don’t even pour your own wine! I love this practice–on Shabbat and holidays, we are all like royalty, so we have someone pour our drinks for us.
Midrash (4) teaches that our holidays and festivals were a gift that we might feel pleasure:
The Holy One of Blessing said: “Delight yourself therein so that you may repeat them in the year to come,” as it is said: And thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in its season from year to year (Exod. 13:10). That is to say, you should repeat them yearly. Therefore, one may say: Just as an individual blesses the Holy One of Blessing, so does the Holy One bless them.
So what practices will you bring into a year of pleasure? What time will you spend alone in nature? Dancing exctatically? Carving out time for your art practice–or finding one all together? What joy will you reach towards around a holiday table? What will you do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to bring more pleasure into your life?
May our celebration of this new year, and our honoring Yom Kippur, our gathering at Sukkot, and our rejoicing at Simchat Torah bring profound delight. May our practice and assembling be sustainable, that we might gather from year to year! Blessing on all that brings you joy and delight, in your sacred self.
End notes:
1. Psalms 104:26
2. Yoma 69b
2. Heschel again!
3. Midrash Tanchumah Bereishit Rabba 4:2