J’Oy Vey: What the push towards ‘Jewish Joy’ misses

So let's, um, let, let's, let's move along to that, the main part of our topic, the main topic of the day.

It's something that came up as we were thinking about Tishrei, about, uh, Sukkot, and about post-October 7th, and one of, one of the big things that has showed up in the discourse post-October 7th is the idea of Jewish joy.

This is, like, an outgrowth of this idea of the surge that happened post-October 7th.

There's a whole lot of fighting antisemitism, and there's, as a result, a push to sort of say, "Hey, let's move towards Jewish joy.

Let's find the joy in our life in Judaism," and to try to lean into that, and you have a lot of articles about this.

Um, it's kind of a outgrowth of other movements, other minorities, you know, leaning into their joy.

You have Latino joy, you have Black joy.

What it...

All of that stuff has been around the discourse.

And so great Jewish joy, and a lot of it, to be fair, is based in Kveller, in Hey Alma, and that world online of people who are, you know, doing cultural Jewish stuff but aren't necessarily super observant, um, even in a liberal understanding of what observant means.

Leaning into all of this, like, you know, how to have fun with your Judaism, how to remix y- your, your Jewish life with whatever other life is.

Where do you guys stand, um, with this idea of Jewish joy? Do you think that there's something positive and, and, you know, we have to, like, embrace this? Do you think-- Do you guys lean more into the backlash, which has happened, and we see a lot of articles online talking about how it's not just about Jewish joy, there's, there's more seriousness to life and, and about that.

But I guess to start, where do you guys stand with this whole subculture of Jewish joy?

Can I just add one thing to your intro-

Sure

...

in this scheme? That the, the argument being made is to redirect Jewish communal funds towards investing in Jewish joy and, like, if we have to take it from somewhere, take it from the efforts to combat antisemitism, right?

Yeah.

Like, it's a question often framed as, like, a redirection of funds.

Um, so I just think-

Sure

... that that's important for the framing.

I'll tell you, when we're, when we're thinking about this topic, some of the things...

I don't wanna be dismissive, but some of the things never feel...

They always feel nice.