When Adar Arrives: An Invitation to Fully Felt Joy

By Rabbi Lauren Tuchman

Image description: Blog image with a photo of a close-up blooming branch, which shows buds and one blooming cherry blossom flower. The branch extends across a blue sky. Text reads, “Adar 5786 by Rabbi Lauren Tuchman”.

This month’s blog is written by Disability Wisdom Project co-director, Rabbi Lauren Tuchman.

The Talmud, in Taanit 29A, famously tells us that when the month of Adar arrives, we are to increase our joy. We aren’t given any instructions around how to concretize this rather abstract teaching, though we can presume that this teaching is connected intrinsically to the observance of Purim, a day the Jewish tradition understands to be the happiest on our calendar.

Rabbi Alan Lew of blessed memory, in his now-classic work, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, refers to joy as any feeling fully felt. Joy is a release of the soul, an immersion in the depth of life. Joy includes all emotional experience, even those emotions we have been conditioned to reject. When we inhabit any moment of our lives fully, we open ourselves up to the possibility—no matter how small—of experiencing a feeling of deep joy.

Indeed, even on days when we recite a series of Psalms of praise known as Hallel (including on Rosh Chodesh), we open ourselves up to a wide range of emotional expression, including grief, rage, longing, and praise.

For me, Rabbi Lew’s teaching articulates so poignantly the truth of our aliveness. Joy isn’t fun, fleeting, or a pique experience, as we’re often taught to understand and relate to it. Joy comes when we can open ourselves to, as is explained in mindfulness practice, what is, moment by moment. Similarly, the Mussar tradition so central to our practice at Kirva invites us to practice daily in a way that is sustainable. Returning each day to our practice can produce a cumulative affect. Intending to increase our joy this Adar, then, doesn’t mean searching for pique experiences each day. It invites us instead to choose, for a set period, to practice in a way that allows us to feel joy—or whatever comes up—fully. As we engage in cheshbon hanefesh—soul accounting, we give ourselves the gift of honest reflection.

This honesty in practice is so important in these times of profound rupture, grief and heartbreak. I often notice the grief that I carry shows up quite somatically in my lungs and solar plexus. I feel constriction. I wonder how to keep practicing amidst such horrifically dehumanizing conditions. How might we maintain hope for a world as yet unrealized in which we all flourish and know, from the inside out, the truth of our belonging? We might even wonder if practicing amidst such unbearable conditions is a privileged bypass.

I invite us this month, however feels right and safe, to inhabit moments fully, to feel feelings fully. As we grow acquainted with our inner terrain—perhaps even by doing some hitbodedut—we may begin to touch into our ratzon—our deep motivation and desire to keep showing up even with all of the setbacks we’ve experienced. Joy can be fully felt when we allow ourselves to be here, now, with what we are actually experiencing. May we find deep joy and release this Adar, and may our practice be a source of support for us amidst this immensely difficult time.

These reflections on embodied practice and honest presence also connect to our upcoming Disability Wisdom as Soul Care gathering with Kirva for Jewish Disability Acceptance and Inclusion Month, where we’ll explore Shabbat as a source of grounding and nourishment in times like these. You’re warmly invited to join us this Thursday for a conversation about spiritual care, rest, and belonging in bodies of all kinds by registering here or in the links below.

Chodesh Tov,

Rabbi Lauren Tuchman