Today it’s my birthday, and I’m joyful, but that’s not really why I’m joyful. Last week I was not joyful, and it wasn’t because it wasn’t my birthday. It was because I was feeling a lot of pain, and also trying not to. A friend and colleague was dying an untimely death in a crazily short amount of time. I wanted to feel grateful and joyful that I was alive, but I just felt really sad. 

Like pain, joy is something I can’t seem to control very well. I reach for joy daily as part of my spiritual practice, but it feels very elusive. Usually it just comes spontaneously, but it’s always a goal: To Live in Joy. This is what we’re told we should do to praise God. It says so in this week’s Torah reading, too. And I want to do it for my family, because it makes life easier for them, and for myself, too, because it makes my life easier as well.

The parsha Ki Tavo is a continuation of the preparation of previous weeks for “Entering the Land,” “Ki Tavo---When you enter,” it begins. It feels like it should be a joyful reading, because the Israelites are about to enter the Land of Milk and Honey, but it’s so incredibly painful to read. It’s just an onslaught of curses---forewarnings of all the terrible things God will bring upon us if we don’t walk in God’s ways. 

As I read it, it felt like a series of bullets entering my body, pow pow pow pow pow!

Then there are the blessings to counter them. If you walk in God’s ways...

On Sunday, for the first time in six months, I left the city and got to be together with my husband, my children, my sister and her daughter, my twin brother and his family, at his house in the country. It was a perfect day. The weather was perfect, sandwiched in between cloudy, stormy, humid, hot days. Perfect temperature. Low humidity. Sunny. A Goldilocks day, as a friend described it. 

I got to go swimming in a stream on the spur of the moment with my sister. First we just put our toes in the water. But the cold, living waters were calling to us, so after a bit of debate, we simply threw our bodies into it. The joy was great and it was incredibly healing.

When we got back to the house, I shared the news excitedly with my nephew. He smiled mischievously: “That’s great! Did you see the snapping turtle?”

I’m glad we didn’t see the snapping turtle. I’m glad I didn’t remember about the snapping turtle, or I wouldn’t have dared go in. 

After this idyllic day of perfect weather, delicious food (that my brother cooked on the grill), playing and fun, and no fights (I think those days are gone. This younger generation in my family seems to have figured out what’s important, I’m happy to report), we got off the train at 125th Street in Harlem, and had to face the snapping turtle after all. 

As we waited for a taxi, the homelessness, the mental illness, the drug problems, the neglect and the racism of our society were all hanging out right in front of the station with us, and it was really painful. The contrast with the incredible privilege I’d just been able to participate in, and that I get to regularly, was stark, and the irony of the situation was not lost on me. And I wished only to escape back to the idyllic world we’d just come from, and to feel the joy. 

Such is the struggle posed to us every day: to face the pain that snaps at us constantly and to make our society a place of joy for everyone. We are to hear the call of the Shofar (the ram’s horn we blow in this season) daily during this month of Elul in preparation for the New Year. It is a call to wake up and make room for change—in ourselves, the way we live, the way we treat others and the earth.

At the same time, we are enjoined to find the joy, even in the midst of the pain. 

I’m no saint. I can’t seem to live in that place of joy, though try I might. I’m just so damn human.

Yet, it’s another intention I have for the Jewish New Year: to really be aware and grateful every day to be alive, and to find the joy in that. Simply put: to fulfill the commandment of living in joy, because it is thus that we are praising God. 

Sometimes I get glimpses of it, like this past Sunday, and it stays with me for a good little while, like today. I know the snapping turtle is there in the background, but I can choose to forget it’s there for just a short time so I can have some peace. 

And that’s okay. 

I understand that it is my privilege that allows me to escape at all. The question is, do I dare to continue to dip my toe—or throw my body—into some joyful waters if the possibility arises, forgetting the snapping turtle for at least a little while. For my own sake and for my family during this very trying time, I have to if I can. But also, I can’t help others and the world if I’m in a constant state of agitation. So I’ll keep that intention.

Happy Elul.