Happiness Now. Laughter Later. Why?
Research shows that laughter is good medicine. Laughter increases blood levels of important immune components, which helps fight infections in the upper respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, and may increase levels of disease-fighting T-cells and natural killer cells. So, laughter helps protect the immune system and decreases stress.
What else is laughter?
Laughter is a recognition of something new, something different, something unexpected. A little boy with pink socks, pajama pants, fancy shoes and a hooded jacket is certainly out of the ordinary (or, at least, in some neighborhoods here in Jerusalem it is!).
The sages relate the 127 years of Sarah’s life to the 127 provinces over which Queen Esther ruled. Sarah was the first mother of the Jewish people, and Queen Esther, through her heroic acts to save the Jewish people, was also a mother to the Jewish people. They also share one more similarity—laughter.
According to some commentaries, not only was Sarah barren, but she didn’t have a womb! There wasn’t even a possibility that she could have children. For her, for us—her descendants—G‑d turned the situation upside down: He created something new, something from nothing. He changed the situation. The barren woman without a womb became fertile; bore a son, Isaac (lit., “he will laugh”); and became the mother of the Jewish people. This act caused laughter.
The Persian king was in cahoots with his evil prime minister, Haman, to kill the Jewish people. Haman built a gallows to kill the righteous Jewish sage Mordechai. The Jewish people fasted and prayed, and G‑d created laughter. He reversed the situation. The king’s beloved queen, Esther, turned out not only to be Jewish, but also to be Mordechai’s niece. The Jewish people were not destroyed, but rather grew stronger. Haman was hanged on his own gallows, Mordechai became the new prime minister, and the king’s own son allowed the building of the Second Temple.
Laughter comes from the revelation that in a split second, our situation can change.
Why, then, do the sages tell us that when the month of Adar (the month when we celebrate Purim) begins, we must increase our happiness, but they don’t tell us to increase our laughter? Laughter is the revealed state of happiness, and we cannot fully laugh until Moshiach comes. Then we will have the full revelation, the full understanding of why hardships happened.
We cannot fully laugh now, but we can increase our happiness, and know that—as the verse states in Proverbs when speaking of the Woman of Valor—we will laugh at the end of our days. We can be joyous and smile, knowing that ultimately the difficulties in life will be sources of pleasure.