This morning I drank my coffee out of a coffee cup that said, “Brimming with Joy”. Last week I had another cup of coffee just labeled, “JOY.” Now I will be clear, I have come to love my morning cup of coffee, but joy? The cups make me smile. But I am not sure that the coffee brings me joy. There are lots of things labeled Joy and I am especially sensitive to it since my middle name and the one my family uses is in fact, Joy. Everywhere you go you see my name.
This week my Bar Mitzvah boys continued a discussion about the prayer Ashrei. “Happy is the one who dwells in the House of the Lord.” So I asked them, what is the difference between happy and joy. One explained patiently to me that happy is an adjective and joy is a noun. One said that happy is external and joy is internal.Another tried to explain that joy is a deeper feeling. You can be happy about the outcome of a football game (hey these are 7th grade boys), but joy is something more. We talked about the root of the word “Asher” in this case Happy but with a sense of “Rich is the one who dwells in the house of the Lord.” How is happy like rich? How are we rich because we dwell in the House of the Lord. One boy said, “We are enriched by G-d’s words.” It was a good discussion.
I have a book entitled “Finding Joy.” It looks at joy from a kabbalistic standpoint. Finding Joy is not a slam dunk. It is not always easy. It is especially not easy if life gives you curve balls. If you are angry–and many of us are. Learning to channel that anger, the book argues, helps to bring us to joy. There are many words in Hebrew for joy–simcha, which carries with a sense of passion according to the Chasidic rabbis. Rinah, to sing with joy, Sasson, Gila,

Perhaps I am thinking of this especially as we approach Purim–when our greeting is “Be Happy It is Adar.” Many of the terms for joy show up in the Book of Esther and then are repeated as part of the marriage blessings. Soon, LORD our God, may there ever be heard in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem voices of joy and gladness, voices of groom and bride, the jubilant voices of those joined in marriage under the bridal canopy, the voices of young people feasting and singing. Blessed are You, LORD, who causes the groom to rejoice with his bride.”

There are ways to find joy and happiness, even within our anger, our fear, our mourning. The Psalm 30 teaches that God turns our mourning to dancing and our sackclothes to robes of joy. Later in the same Psalm we learn that tears may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. So there are ways to take our sadness and turn it into joy, to uncover the hidden joy. Sometimes in the book of Esther, everything seems hidden–Esther’s identity, G-d’s presence, even the joy amidst the destruction at the end. But it is there, just below the surface, waiting to be discovered, in our ways in our own times. Maybe it is like my Bar Mitzvah boys and it is obvious. It is probably something I, especially given my name I will continue to wrestle with. How do you find joy and happiness?