Laughing Through the Pain: How Can We Be Joyful This Purim?

When I was young, my mom brought me with her to a shiva house for a woman whose husband had died. I didn’t really know the woman or her husband, but for some reason, when I got there, I decided to make a joke. It got a big laugh, so I continued.

Before I knew it, I had turned the shiva house into a comedy club, where everyone was laughing uproariously. Then, the people there started opening up to each other and sharing stories about the man who had passed away.

After we left, I wasn’t sure if what I had done was right or wrong. But I was leaning towards wrong. I started thinking that I had perhaps not been respectful enough and that I really shouldn’t have brought humor to a situation like that. I told myself I’d never do it again.

That night, my mom got a call from the woman whose husband had died. She said, “Please thank your son for me. This whole week has been incredibly heavy and very difficult. The levity your son brought to the shiva house may have saved me. I can’t tell you how badly I needed to laugh. And I’m sure it’s what my husband would have wanted. Please let your son know he did a very big mitzvah here today, to make it possible for me to continue on with shiva.”

When I heard this, I reevaluated my self-criticism – though I wouldn’t recommend trying it yourself. There’s nothing worse than bombing at a shiva house, trust me.

I am now a comedian, and I see the power of laughter. During this difficult moment, when we are mourning all the Jews who lost their lives since October 7, praying for the hostages, and dealing with a rise in antisemitism, it’s important that we also keep our sense of humor.

I believe laughter is a built-in mechanism that God gave us to deal with tragedy in a natural way. Laughing releases dopamine, which improves your mood. It also eliminates anxiety. The reason sometimes people will anxiously laugh is because laughter is a natural antidote for anxiety.

It’s interesting timing that Adar is coming after the tragic last few weeks the Jewish people have experienced. How can we be happy right now?

I once heard a great rabbi, Rabbi David Bassous, explain that the Hebrew calendar is set up in such a way that we are commanded to feel certain ways at certain times of the year. We are supposed to be sad on Tisha B’Av and happy in the current month, the month of Adar. Rabbi Bassous said the reason for this is to teach us to have mastery over our own emotions. If you can force yourself to feel a certain way at a certain time, then you can control the way you feel at any time.

With that in mind, it’s important to have a certain degree of reverence for how you deal with tragedy and not use humor simply as a mechanism to deflect from the gravity of a situation. However, we do need to keep ourselves from spiraling into depression. Our sages teach us that depression is a tool of the yatzer hara, the evil inclination.

We are more prone to doing the wrong things when we are in a state of vulnerability. When we are depressed, we feel that our life is already out of control, so why try to control it? We must resist falling into that trap. To keep ourselves from doing that, we can laugh.

A good sense of humor has kept the Jewish people going for thousands of years. This Purim, you may notice in the Megillah, the miracle, God’s presence, is hidden, and then, like a punchline, revealed at the end.

This year, I know it’ll be so hard to laugh. But we must continue to – otherwise, our enemies, be it Haman or Hamas, will win.

I pray that everybody this year can laugh and truly experience joy with the return of our hostages and the defeat of our enemies. May we all be blessed to soon laugh together in the streets of Jerusalem as one family.

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