Parshat VaYera

           Beans, beans, good for the heart. The more you eat, the more you....laugh!  This joke was the litmus test for my sense of humor growing up.  My father told me that as soon as I thought this was funnier than the version that I was used to as a young boy (and be honest, the version that many of you immediately thought of!), then I had developed a good sense of humor.  Why was that so important?  Why must one recognize what is laugh-worthy?
            Sarah our Mother, peace be upon her/שרה אמינו עליה השלום, laughs when she hears the news that God tells Abraham that she will have a child. “And Sarah laughed within herself, saying: 'After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?'/ וַתִּצְחַק שָׂרָה בְּקִרְבָּהּ לֵאמֹר:  אַחֲרֵי בְלֹתִי הָיְתָה-לִּי עֶדְנָה, וַאדֹנִי זָקֵן.”  Then God asks, “Why did she laugh?!?”  And Sarah denies, claiming that she did not laugh.  God responds and says, “No, you did laugh.” Classically this has been seen as a lack of faith by Sarah.  How could she laugh and mock the powers of God?
          Yafit Klaimer reads this very differently. She teaches that the constant dialogue around laughter in our text (12 times there is laughter surrounding the birth of Isaac/יצחק--which shares the Hebrew root for laughter) hints to us that Sarah in fact did a great thing for us by laughing.  And the covenant we have with God becomes a covenant of laughter because of her. Why does Sarah laugh? She laughs because of the absurdity of it all.  It makes no intelligent sense to be able to bear a child at such an age!  Klaimer points out that this laughter is not lack of faith, and in fact, God welcomes it!  The laugh is an authentic response to the amazing news that Sarah received.  Sarah was reacting to the wonders of the world. And God’s response, “No, you did laugh”, is God saying that that is indeed an acceptable response. As Klaimer puts it, it is as if God is saying “Don’t give up on your laughter.”  Sarah is teaching us how to actually have complete faith in this ironic world where the mysterious and nonsensical accompany our daily lives.
          The reason that my father’s joke is (still) funny, is that it misleads you to an end that you think should not be there, and yet it is.  This week we can thank Sarah our Mother for giving us a different model of what Rabbi Heschel calls “radical amazement.”  Often, when we think of radical amazement, we tend to think of solemn and intense moments, like we may imagine happening at Sinai.  True amazement is the acceptance of a world that we cannot explain.  There is no greater faith in our Creator than accepting that reality. And sometimes, that can be funny, so keep laughing, it is good for the heart.  

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ezra