Is My Pain Funny to You?

Maybe that’s okay.

Shrouded Pug — Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

This week, I published The Dog Food/Jewish Aisle of My Local Grocery on Medium, and it resonated with a lot of people. My local friends offered to write letters to the store. Strangers retweeted the story. And Medium? Well, Medium curated it into Humor.*

*(It was also curated into Equality and Religion.)

My first thought was, “Oh no, they accidentally put it in the Humor section!”

But then I reread my story — this time, without the painful immediacy I felt when I wrote it. I purposely read it in a funny voice to myself, and you know what? It was pretty funny.

I used to know I was funny. My childhood nickname was Funnies, in fact. But somewhere along the way, I started taking myself super-seriously. There is so much that needs fixing in this world, that sometimes we forget to laugh.

(Gentiles, please laugh as well, but) I do want to mention that Judaism’s got a rich, ongoing tradition of mixing tragedy with comedy.

Nobody’s doing this better right now than Rachel Bloom, artistic infinite-threat and basically my favorite person ever who I don’t know in real life. She’s the star of the musical comedy show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and, along with Aline Brosh McKenna, also co-creator, executive producer, writer, and occasional director. The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend team manages to be hilarious, while also being honest: about mental illness, about the patriarchy, about race. All the sad things become more understandable (and more likely to open minds) when we let ourselves laugh.

Do yourself a favor and watch every episode. But here’s just one clip from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend:

Remember That We Suffered — feat. Patti LuPone & Tovah Feldshuh — “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”

SO FUNNY.

So I’m going to try to chill out, and to remember the words of another incredible Jewish woman, Emma Goldman. People paraphrase her with, If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.

Here’s exactly what she wrote, in response to a comrade telling her that she shouldn’t dance, that her frivolity and reckless abandon would hurt the Cause. From Volume 1 of her 1931 autobiography, Living My Life:

I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.

So I’m gonna keep writing from the heart, about my life, about my pain, about all the bullshit in this world that needs changing. And if you find some humor in it, that’s awesome. I’ll try to laugh right along with you.