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Pull up a chair. I'm going to tell you a tale out of shul (synagogue).
Recently, a discussion went around the room at our shul about whether to say a certain prayer that week. As the discussion heated up, I turned to my friend, one of the founders, and a standard bearer for the shul's customs. And he's not shy.
But now he wasn't saying anything.
I said, "You're unusually quiet."
He just smiled.
"Well," I said, "what's the custom?"
He just kept smiling.
"So?"
"That is."
"That is what?"
"That's the custom."
"What's the custom?"
"The custom is we fight."
Even when we don't fight, we often kvetch.
My daughter-in-law Ariella is a novelist. One day, Ariella was writing something and told my then-2-year-old grandson, Yaakov Chaim, "I need a few minutes of quiet."
He countered, "But I need to kvetch."
I should tell you there was another version: He said "kretch," not "kvetch."
You might dismiss that as a toddler's mispronunciation.
I'd say that he coined a new word, blending kvetch — to complain or whine; with krechtz — to groan.
Put them together and you have the audio for a Jewish exercise/therapy program. It combines a Yiddish primal scream with Oyrobics — a low-energy/high-anxiety workout.
"All together now: ‘Kvetch, krechtz, kretch …"
Ahhh, I feel worse already.
I'm reminded of a story told by British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z"l, in a lecture on the Jewish approach to happiness.
A fellow he called Max Goldberg took sick and was rushed to a hospital in Massachusetts, one of the finest hospitals in the United States.
After a week, Goldberg checked himself out and transferred to a run-down Jewish hospital on New York's Lower East Side. His doctor was dumbfounded.
The doctor asked, "Goldberg, tell me what was the matter in the other hospital? Didn't the doctors understand your condition?"
And Goldberg said, "The doctors? All double Einsteins! About the doctors, I can't complain."
"So what was it? Did the nurses not give you proper care?"
Goldberg said, "The nurses? Angels every one of them. About the nurses, I can't complain."
"Was it the food?"
"No, the food was manna from Heaven. About the food I can't complain."
"So, tell me, why did you leave that magnificent hospital and come to this place?"
And Goldberg said with a big smile, "Because here, I can complain."
Michael Wex, author of Born to Kvetch, has written extensively about kvetchology. He posits that kvetching is built into the national character of the Yiddish language.
According to Wex, by its very nature, Yiddish is the language of exile. Therefore, by definition, life is not as it should be. Following this uniquely Jewish syllogism, the conclusion is that, even if something seems to be good, it really isn't.
YIVO, an organization dedicated to preserving secular Yiddish culture, recently ran an educational seminar on Jewish humor inspired by an old joke: Two women are sitting in a restaurant and the waiter asks, "Ladies, is anything OK?"
So what gives? Are we really hardwired to be miserable? Are we only happy if we're unhappy?
No. We are not genetically miserable or bitter. We are realistic. We embrace reality in all its bittersweet piquant pungency, and savor the bite with a resonant kvetch .
(Digression — or maybe not: Between Cambridge University and the town of Cambridge, there's a lamppost with a painted sign: "Reality Checkpoint." According to Jargon File, the lamp-post "marks the boundary between the university and the ‘Real World.'")
When the Alter Vorker Rebbe, zy"a, (d. 1848 ) brought his two young sons (Yaakov Dovid, later the first Amshinover Rebbe) and Menachem Mendel (later, the Mittele Vorker Rebbe) to the Seer of Lublin, zy"a, the Seer gave them a bit of strong beer.
"Oy, it's bitter," said Yaakov Dovid. His younger brother, Menachem Mendel, tasted it and said, "It's bitter, but it's good."
Reality dishes out bitter herbs. To bear it, we dip it in sweet laughter. As Solomon Rabinovitz (aka Sholem Aleichem) said, "Laughter is good for you; doctors prescribe laughter."
But humor is more than just a painkiller or coping mechanism. We are known as the People of the Book. We've also been called the People of the Joke.
No kidding. You can laugh, but humor is holy. The Talmud (Taanis 22a) says that Rav Broka met the Prophet Elijah in the marketplace and asked, "Who has a share in the World to Come?" While they were talking, two people passed by and Prophet pointed to them and said that they have a share in the World to Come. Rav Broka approached the men and asked their occupation.
"We are comedians (ArtScroll's translation — literally, "happy"). When we see sad people, we cheer them up."
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, zt"l (d. 1888 ), found humor in what seems to be outrageous blasphemy.
In the Torah reading of Beshalach, Pharaoh's army is closing in on the Children of Israel at the Red Sea. They cry out to the Lord. And then they say to Moses, "Was it for a lack of graves in Egypt that you brought us here to die in the wilderness?"
Rabbi Hirsch comments, "This sharp irony even in a moment of deepest anxiety and despair marks the sense of wit that is characteristic of the clearheaded Tribe of Jacob."
When I was a teenager, we lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in a house owned by my great-uncle. He used to rent out the basement for parties. My brother remembered that, if there was a party going on when he came home at night, he could always guess the background of the partygoers. If — instead of being out in the street, fighting — they were inside hugging each other and crying, he knew it was a Jewish party.
Yes, we get sad. There's a lot to be sad about. And yes, we fight.
We're a dysfunctional family. But at our core, we're laughing and dancing together.
Sometimes it's just hard to tell the difference between dancing and wrestling.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Mordechai Schiller is an award-winning columnist and headline writer at Hamodia, the Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry, where this first appeared. His column has won two awards -- so far -- from the American Jewish Press Association.
Previously:
• The Time Machine
• One big happy dysfunctional family
• Why Pay Less If You Can Pay More?
• Are We Having Font Yet?
• Why Smart People Do Dumb Things
• There is nothing so sad as a stupid Jew
• Asking For It