Joy has long been a retail winner this time of year. It’s mentioned on Dunkin’ coffee cups. I’ve seen it used to advertise Macy’s on 34th Street in Manhattan — most amusingly right outside St. Francis of Assisi Church. Overpriced bakery items and hot drinks with froth and crème at Paris Baguette promise joy if you “unwrap” them. Of course, even if you are the easiest person in the world to please, there is no consumer item that can deliver true joy. And yet, in the face of hardship and torture, joy is possible. What is so casually used to make a sale is one of the most hard-fought and enduring treasures.
In the days before the shootings at Brown University — in a Jewish professor’s classroom — and at the Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a video was unearthed by the Israel Defense Forces that shows hostages who had been kidnapped by Hamas holding a Hanukkah service before they were killed. As six men prayed psalms, they were reminded that there is no human emotion that is not expressed in our shared book of Scripture. In their abhorrent suffering, there was a confidence in God; a faith, for sure, hope, and even a joy. Love and joy are what evil hates. Those hostages, in their insistence on community amid darkness, demonstrated a stubborn, awesome joy that even terrorism couldn’t subdue. Those men — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi — were murdered by Hamas. Evil may have taken their lives, but they held onto joy. May that memory be a blessing to all who are righteously angry at their murder — which is now part of the chronicles of our world’s cruelty to the Jewish people — and a reminder to never let go of joy as long as we have breath left in us.
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