A laughing matter

The psychology of laughter in the Torah

Many of the sources here are from last week’s parsha, but the ideas felt deeply relevant and provided a tiny bit of comfort to me. I hope it does the same for you.

The first laugh

After birth became impossible, Avraham and Sarah have a child

Bereishit 21:

Sarah conceived and bore Avraham a son in his old age at the set time of which God had spoken to him.(3) Avraham named his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Yitzchak…. Sarah said, "God has brought laughter to me, all who hear will laugh with me! She said, "Who would have said to Avraham, 'Sarah will nurse sons!' Yet, I have born a child to him in his old age!"

Of course, Avraham and Sarah themselves both laughed when they heard the news. Yet while Avraham is spared from reprimand, Sara is taken to task:

Bereishit 17

(17) Avraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, "To a one hundred year old, will a child be born? Will Sarah, at ninety years old, give birth?"

Bereishit 19

(11) And Avraham and Sarah were elderly, coming on in years; Sarah had ceased to have a menstrual flow like women. (12) Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have withered, will I give birth?! And, my lord is old!"

(13) Hashem said to Avraham, "Why has Sarah laughed, saying, 'will I really give birth and I am old?'(14) Is anything too wondrous for Hashem? At this set time I will return to you, when the season comes again, and Sarah will have a son."(15) Sarah denied it, saying, "I did not laugh", because she was afraid, and He [God] said, "No, but you laughed."

Both Avraham and Sarah find the idea of giving birth at an elderly age absurd. Both laugh for the same reason - it’s a biological impossibility! So why is Sarah but not Avraham taken to task? And why does Sarah deny her laughter to God? Even if she was afraid, did she really think she could get away with it?

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A different kind of laughter

The same shoresh צחק emerges in other instances in last week’s parsha with a different connotation.

When Sodom is about to be destroyed due to its corruption, and Lot needs to get his whole family to leave quickly, his son-in-laws, rather than responding to the severity of the situation, laugh.

Bereshit 19:14

Lot went out and spoke with his sons-in-law who married his daughters and said, "Rise and get out of this place, because Hashem is to destroy the city!" But it seemed to his sons-in-law that he was joking.

The son-in-laws, taking the whole thing to be a joke, don’t follow Lot out of the fire and end up being destroyed.

A few chapters later, laughter is the cause for the banishment of Ishmael.

Bereshit 21:9

Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she bore to Avraham, acting lasciviously/jokingly (מצחק). She said to Avraham, "Cast out this handmaid and her son, because the son of this handmaid shall not inherit with my son, with Yitzchak."

Although מצחק does have other, more serious connotations in the Torah e.g., a simple interpretation of the text is that Yishmael and Yitzhak were laughing together

For example the Ibn Ezra (א) writes:

Laughter- because this is the way of children

What was so problematic with Ishmael’s laughter to warrant banishment? And how is it different from Avraham’s (and Sarah’s) laughter?

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The psychology of laughter

Laughter, it turns out is physiologically healthy. According to a number of studies, laughter can improve immune function, lower blood pressure, improve short-term memory, and reduce stress.

But what makes something funny? An early theory espoused by philosophers such as Plato and Hobbes is that a certain type of humor is generated from ridicule, oftentimes expressed as superiority over others. As such, it is frequently elicited at another person’s misfortunes.

Since then, this theory has come under numerous criticisms primarily for the reason that it captures a very limited set of events and stories we find funny.

In Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, Hurley, Dennet, and Adams expand on the underlying sources of laughter and present their own theory of what makes something funny. This is from a review in the Boston Globe:

Hurley and his coauthors begin from the idea that our brains make sense of our daily lives via a never ending series of assumptions, based on sparse, incomplete information. All these best guesses simplify our world, give us critical insights into the minds of others, and streamline our decisions. But mistakes are inevitable, and even a small faulty assumption can open the door to bigger and costlier mistakes.

Enter mirth, a little pulse of reward the brain gives itself for seeking out and correcting our mistaken assumptions. A sense of humor is the lure that keeps our brains alert for the gaps between our quick-fire assumptions and reality.

Hurley argues that laughter is the way the brain rewards itself for finding a discrepancy between our expectations and reality. Since finding and disabling errors in our thinking is a critical but a resource-intensive job, our laughter serves as a reward for discovering that we are wrong in unexpected ways.

Hurley spends a book developing and defending this theory, which is beyond the scope of this article. But what fascinates me about this theory of laughter is that it is actually compatible with Plato/Hobbes’s superiority-theory as well.

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The differences in laughter

If laughter is the encounter between our assumptions and reality, then our laughter can embody two responses. One is the laughter of an expanded understanding and the other is of ridicule- of rejecting that which does not align with our current view.

Everything Avraham and Sarah knew about the world, knew about biology and birth, suggested that birth at their age was impossible. But suddenly God told Avraham that they would have a son. This total violation of reality made Avraham laugh. But it was a laughter of acceptance as the Bechor Shor writes:

His falling and prostration prove that Avraham believed. And it is the way of thanksgiving- happy and laughing.

Avraham laughed in acceptance of a new possibility he had never though possible.

In contrast, when Lot warns his family that God is about to destroy the city, his son-in-laws also face an incongruity between expectations and reality. But in their case they treat Lot’s warning as a joke- meaning they refuse to re-consider that what they know and believe could be wrong. They laughed at Lot.

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Sarah’s laughter

So why was Sarah confronted by God? The Bechor Shor explains that Sarah was taken to task for her laughter because without any outwards expression of her laughter - “Sarah laughed inside”, it seemed like she was denying the possibility of having the child. It was for that reason that God “called her out for it”. But why did Sarah deny her laughter?

The simple interpretation of the text

Sarah denied it, saying, "I did not laugh", because she was afraid, and He [God] said, "No, but you laughed."

is that Sarah was afraid of ‘getting in trouble’ with God for laughing.

Perhaps (and this I admit is speculative), Sarah noticed a laughter inside her in response to the news that she would have a child. But Sarah had a notion of laughter like that of the son-in-laws of Lot. A laughter of ridicule. Of course Sarah did not doubt God’s ability to bring about even the absurd, so when she noticed a part of her laughing - that scared her. And whereas she did not outwardly doubt God’s Ability (and that’s what she meant “I did not laugh”), what God helped her realize through “no, you did laugh” is that there is another kind of laughter that is possible and that should be expressed. And it was that insight that caused Sarah to go from denying her to laughter to exclaim about her son "God has brought laughter to me, all who hear will laugh with me! God is the source of that laughter.

I’ve also wondered if it is with this insight that Sarah became particularly attuned to the different kinds of laughter. And so when Sarah observed the son of Hagar “joking/ridiculing” with Yitzhak, she saw the danger in their way of play. Not only because, as the older sibling Yishmael would undermine the status of Yitzhak. But that in “laughing together”, Yishmael would teach Yitzhak a laughter of ridicule but not a laughter of a wonderment. Yishmael would corrupt Yitzhak in the essence of his name.

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Laughter is at the core of our national identity

It is also this kind of laughter that is central to the founding of our nation. Rav Hirsch provides a beautiful explanation of the meaning of יצחק׳s laughter

In any case, צחוק laughter, is triggered only by noticing something ridiculous or absurd, and there can be no greater absurdity than the expectation now held by Avraham. Avraham was a hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety. In the course of their long married life, Avraham had no children by Sarah. Now, Practically at the end of their lives they were to have a son! The birth of this child would be totally unexpected; and even if he were to be born, he would be an only child, and in all likelihood would be orphaned at an early age. Yet the prospects of a great nation destined to prevail over the entire world, the hopes of all of mankind, are to rest on this late-born, orphaned youth! if we consider only the natural course of things, this expectation seems totally absurd -like mountains hanging by hair!

Indeed, it was a great absurdity, and even Avraham- who, by throwing himself down on his face, had already expressed his confidence- could not help but laugh. Great significance is attached to this laughter. It is repeated below, in connection with Sarah, and will be evoked for all time by the name of the promised child.

The laughter of Yitzhak was in response to the absurdity of giving birth. It was a total breaking of expectations of how the natural world is meant to work. Rav Hirsch continues:

The beginning of he Jewish people was absurd. To the rational mind, which calculates only on the basis of cause and effect, this people's history, expectations, hopes and life appear as a monstrous, ludicrous, pretension. Jewish History begins to make sense- indeed, deserves to be studied with utmost seriousness-only if one evaluates it on the basis of the higher causality of the Cause of all causes; if one believes in the free, omnipotent Will of the free God, Who acts freely and intervenes powerfully in the affairs of His world.

The whole history of our people is absurd, because any calculation of the laws of history, science and economics suggests that the Jewish people should not have survived. Rav Hirsch continues:

It was imperative that our ancestors know this from the beginning, and that their descendants always remember this. That is why God waited until the nation's patriarch and matriarch reached an absurd age; that is why Ge began to fulfill His promises only after all human hope was lost. He wished to create Himself a nation that would be אצבע אלקים- a"finger" of G-d. an indication of God in the midst of mankind. From the beginning to the end of its existence, this nation would stand opposed to all the forces operating in world history. Until this very day, the Jewish people is considered an utter absurdity in the eyes of God denying fools. The laughter the follows the Jew on his way through history testifies to the Divine character of his path. The laughter does not disturb him, because he was prepared for this laughter in advance.

We laugh, when we realize what we thought to be the case is really not. And as strange as it seems, I think that laughter is particularly relevant today.

Let me explain.

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The absurdity of today’s anti-semitism

The absurdity of today’s anti-semitism is hard to fathom. Jews suffer genocide and are blamed for it. For the media to report that Israel bombed a hospital with 500 dead (a total counted up within seconds), all that is required is Hamas’s word. But when that same Hamas, which openly states its objective is the killing of Jews, kills Jews, “more evidence” is necessary.

Sartre summed it up the best:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

―Jean-Paul Sartre Anti-Semite and Jew

Rightfully so, us Jews today are not only mourning the tragedies themselves but much of the world’s complete disregard and blatant anti-semitism that the tragedy uncovered.

But in that feeling of despair, I think to the absurdity in it all, and I think of the famous story of Rabbi Akiva.

Gemara Makkot 24b:2

They [the sages] were ascending to Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple…When they arrived at the Temple Mount, they saw a fox that emerged from the site of the Holy of Holies. They began weeping, and Rabbi Akiva was laughing. They said to him: For what reason are you laughing? Rabbi Akiva said to them: For what reason are you weeping? They said to him: This is the place concerning which it is written: “And the non-priest who approaches shall die” (Numbers 1:51), and now foxes walk in it; and shall we not weep?

The sages saw a horrific tragedy. The temple, the center of Jewish existence for hundreds of years was suddenly destroyed. Jews were either killed or exiled. But what prompted the tears was the absurdity of seeing foxes wandering the temple. The most sacred space in the world, on which even the high-priest could only approach once a year. Now desolate and inhabited by foxes.

That absurdity caused the sages to cry.

But that same absurdity made Rabbi Akiva laugh.

Rabbi Akiva said to them: That is why I am laughing, as it is written, when God revealed the future to the prophet Isaiah: “And I will take to Me faithful witnesses to attest: Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah” (Isaiah 8:2)….

In the prophecy of Uriah it is written: “Therefore, for your sake Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become rubble, and the Temple Mount as the high places of a forest” (Micah 3:12), where foxes are found.

In the prophecy of Zechariah it is written: “There shall yet be elderly men and elderly women sitting in the streets of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 8:4). Until the prophecy of Uriah with regard to the destruction of the city was fulfilled I was afraid that the prophecy of Zechariah would not be fulfilled, as the two prophecies are linked.

Now that the prophecy of Uriah was fulfilled, it is evident that the prophecy of Zechariah remains valid.

Rabbi Akiva sees the absurdity of destruction, the absurdity of the temple filled with foxes, and derives comfort from it! Because it is in encountering the absurd that it clicked for him.

We live in an absurd world, and therefore just like the deep seated belief that the temple could never be destroyed turned out to be wrong, so to the inability to see how בני ישראל would ever recover from this tragedy was equally wrong. All the sages could do was to rely on the prophecies of the neviim that ultimately redemption will come. And so Rabbi Akiva laughed.

And as difficult and sad as these days for us have been, as absurd as the anti-semitic claims against us are, perhaps we can add a little bit of laughter to our crying. Because with prophecies of destruction, there are prophecies of return and of redemption.

Bibliography of outside texts

Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (trs.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Hurley, M., D. Dennett, and R. Adams, 2011, Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, Schocken Books, Paris, 1948