Life Is Funny, Isn’t It?! – The Mystic Holiness of Laughter

It’s hard to find opportunities to laugh these days. The world around us is tense and fraught with conflict. The news is full of doom and gloom. Too many people are struggling, hurting, afraid. Yet even in the midst of the deepest darkness, Torah teaches us not only that we can laugh, but we must.

In this week’s parsha, Vayera, when Sarah finally gives birth to a child even though she is 90 years old, she declares, “schok asa li E-lohim/God has made laughter for me” (Genesis 21:6). While Sarah here refers to the great joy she feels as a result of this wonderful event, the chassidic masters point out a deeper meaning in this verse.

The Alter Rebbe explains that the ultimate source of laughter is “hitchadshus,” innovation or surprise. We laugh at a joke when the punchline is unexpected. In this context, the Alter Rebbe explains why the verse alludes to God by His name E-lohim instead of one of His other names, like A-donai or E-l. E-lohim represents the concealed aspect of God, the Godliness that is buried within the natural world. For this reason the gematria (numerological value) of the word E-lohim is the same as “hateva/nature.”

It is the hiddenness of God that creates laughter. How so? We might think that on the contrary, God’s concealment is what causes all of the sadness and negativity in the world. However, the Alter Rebbe explains, if we recognize that laughter is generated by that which is unexpected, then we can understand that God’s purpose for creating the world was so that in a place where He was concealed, humans could surprise themselves (and one another) by acting Godly in a place of seeming Godlessness.

The “nature” of this realm is that creatures will act in their self-interest. When one transcends this “human nature” and “way of the world” and acts charitably or altruistically, this is a tremendous “hitchadshus/innovation.” In truth, it is our essential nature to act Godly, because our deepest core is a literal spark of God Himself. Yet this Godly spark is so deeply buried within the crust of physicality that it is “difficult,” so to speak, for it to express itself. This is precisely why we were created, to overcome the challenges that hide our Godly nature, and thereby to create tremendous joy and laughter for ourselves and our Creator.

Sarah and Abraham named their child Yitzchak/Isaac, which means laughter, and he would become the forefather of the Jewish nation. This is because it is the task of Isaac’s descendants to be the “comedians” of the world, to help all of God’s creatures to laugh and revel in the revelation of their hidden Godly core.

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