The following includes excerpts from Ze’ev Korn, LCSW, MSW, EdM’s upcoming book, “Stop Falling Apart, Start Cracking Up, Learn to Live The Way of Humor™”
God has made laughter for me.
On Rosh Hashanah, Jews around the world will read the same section of the Torah. It is the story of the birth of Isaac, or Yitzhak in Hebrew, whose name means laughter. What a way to begin the new year, with the gift of laughter and humor being brought into the world. While everyone has experienced the pleasure of laughing, I (and I imagine others) have also known the experience of losing one’s sense of humor.
It has been my longtime personal and professional interest to understand how one can regain, maintain and increase one’s sense of humor — the ability to see the funny side of things. I have found humor is not just an experience but can be a way of life — one that can help us not just enjoy but cope with, and triumph over, adversity and challenges.
"I have found humor is not just an experience but can be a way of life — one that can help us not just enjoy but cope with, and triumph over, adversity and challenges."
I believe each Rosh Hashanah we are reintroduced, and reminded, of the gifts of laughter and humor, the gifts God gave Sarah and Abraham — and all of us — with the birth of Isaac/Yitzhak.
Thirty years ago, which feels like just yesterday, I met a man who told me the following when he laughed: When things are dark and you can see no way out, there is a way. You were born with it. From time immemorial, people have sought out a way. In the East, they call it the Dao. All religions speak of it, and many self-help books try to guide one to it. But you and I, Michael’s laugh told me, were born with a way inside of us. The ancient Greeks used the same name — Humors — for the fluids in our body; not the stagnant, fixed organs, but the liquid that flows inside of us. For those of us who have ever felt stuck and didn’t know how to find a way out, there actually has always been a way, and we were born with it. And as the Greeks knew, it flows through us. It is time to discover, cultivate and live the Way of Humor. And for those who may be despairing, humor reminds us a way forward is possible; that we, too, can be joyfully surprised. Like Sarah, who gave birth at the age of 90, we can be given the gift of new life, of laughter.
This brings us to Rosh Hashanah and the Torah portion we read at the start of the new year. The story itself gives us clues as to why Abraham and Sarah, our patriarch and matriarch, named their first child Isaac/Yitzak/Laughter. God tells Sarah that, after a life of being barren and in her old age, she would get pregnant and have a baby. Sarah laughed at the surprise of it all. Humor always has an element of giving birth. Sarah could have argued with God and said, ‘No way, not possible!’ But she didn’t, and we can wonder, why did she laugh instead? Sarah laughed at both the absurdity — the surprise of such a thing happening — as well as the possibility of it being true. If Sarah didn’t believe it could be true, she would not have laughed at all. If she was wedded to the belief in what she thought she knew — that 90-year-old women don’t get pregnant and give birth — she would never have seen or been open to the humor in God’s statement that there was a new reality, a surprise, that something she didn’t think possible was going to happen.
In the world of psychology, we might say God presented to Sarah a new paradigm, and she was open to hearing it. In the words of the mystics, we could say God was going to perform a miracle, something thought to not be able to happen was going to happen. Sarah’s laughter was a sign of her willingness to believe in a new reality, her openness to being wrong, to finding something true she didn’t think was true before. It was that willingness, and openness to possibility, that allowed her to laugh. And it is on Rosh Hashanah, while reading and hearing the story of Sarah laughing, that we, too, are invited to believe new realities are possible and, in doing so, we will also be gifted with laughter and new life.
"Sarah’s laughter was a sign of her willingness to believe in a new reality, her openness to being wrong, to finding something true she didn’t think was true before. It was that willingness, and openness to possibility, that allowed her to laugh."
May we all be blessed in this coming new year to experience not just many “Aha“ moments but a joyful “Haha!” with each one. And especially the laughter of an Aha! you did not expect — something new, something that tickles you, tickles your fancy or, more appropriately, your funny bone. Something that intrigues you, that wakes you up to something new and delights you. And fills you with life; specifically, the feeling — and maybe even the reality — of new life.
May we be blessed with the Ha that in Hawaiian is referred to as “breath of life”; the He He Ho Ho from Lamaze breathing used during childbirth while bringing a new life into the world; the laughter that Annie Lamont refers to as “carbonated holiness”; the laughter of the neurodiverse 11-year-old boy with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder who told me that, when he laughs, “it gets him on the upside of down,” that laughter has taught him “nothing can have just one side.” And laughter, Michael said, “is the way we take hope’s temperature” and is “the gift of our character’s indomitable courage to endure and triumph.” And just maybe in the rapid-fire shofar blasts, the Truahs as they are called, instead of the sound of crying, we will hear the sound of laughter — Sarah’s laughter: He he he he he he he he he, calling us to laugh along with her. And in doing so, we will be healed from past troubles and disappointments, and we will be given the gift of new life.
The sages say, “When Sarah conceived, many barren women conceived as well. Many deaf people started hearing, many blind people started seeing, and many of the insane became sane” (Bereshit Rabba 53:8). This explains Sarah’s statement, “God has brought me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh with me” (Bereshit 21:6). For, to a certain extent, all were healed with her.