Writing over at Crooked Timber, Eszter Hargittai offers some humourous "Zen Jewish" sayings along with her good wishes for the High Holidays. Stuff like:
"There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?"
Some of them were spiritually useful, too:
"Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?"
High Holidays are a time of dedicated reflection, but the Jewish people have been sustained through all of our trials by humour as well as Torah. Even repentance can come from laughter, by recognizing the ridiculousness of the situations that our poor behaviour gets us into. Jerry Seinfeld made a career out of this - so nu, what are you waiting for already?
May we all resolve to keep our senses of humour amidst the coming year's trials.
From Zen Judaism: For You a Little Enlightenment, by David M. Bader (Harmony Books) © 2002.