September 22, 2021
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Sukkot, Day 2
September 22, 2021 — 16 Tishrei 5782
Learning How to Color Hair Better
by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Very often I feel that my hair is not doing anything for me. It’s just kind of there. So before Yom Kippur, since I was about to see the entire congregation, I have to confess that in addition to teshuvah, I was thinking about my hair. I shared my dilemma with Shira: Should I go see my hair stylist, Tami, who works at Dellaria? Why, she asked. Because my hair is not doing anything for me, I answered. I think your hair is fine. Fine? Is that all you can say? Married for 36 years? All you can say is that my hair is fine? Say more, I said. OK, she said. Your hair is sparse.
Sparse? What is sparse hair, anyway? I found that very demotivating. It was the day before Yom Kippur, I had more important things to think about, so I did not see Tami before the day of atonement.
However, on the morning after the day of atonement, I was with Tami, who was cutting my sparse hair, we were making pleasant chit chat, and since I have been seeing her for years, I know that Monday is her day off. I asked her: what are you going to do this Monday, on your day off?
I am coming in to Dellaria Salon this coming Monday.
But Monday is your day off. Why are you coming in?
Because I want to take a class. They are having a hair expert teach a class on how to color hair. And I want to learn.
Wait a minute, I said. How long have you been a professional hair stylist?
Over 30 years.
And in those 30 plus years, how many people’s hair have you colored?
Thousands. Too many to count.
So you already know how to color hair.
Yes, but I could always learn how to color hair better.
Tami’s Torah—I already know how to color hair, but I could always learn how to do it better—is not only a helpful life lesson. It also connects with a challenge of the festival of Sukkot.
As we know, Sukkot is zman simchateinu, the festival of our rejoicing. V’samachta b’chagecha, you shall rejoice in your festival.
The usual gloss on rejoicing on Sukkot is that it teaches us the fine art of rejoicing in the face of what does not last. Everything about Sukkot is temporary. Nothing lasts. The lulav and etrog that are fresh and fragrant on day 1 are withered and dry at the end of the holiday. The sukkah that is so bright and promising on day 1 is windswept and rain-damaged, with all kinds of green detritus everywhere, a week later. The festival takes place in the fall, itself but a harbinger of winter. In the face of all that is precious and ephemeral, this holiday teaches us to rejoice in what we have while we have it, an 8-day rejoicing premised on intentional savoring of what does not last but is beautiful in the moment. That is lovely.
But Tami’s Torah takes us to an entirely different place.
What is the theory for joy that lasts 8 days? Savor the moment while you have it.
What is the theory for joy that lasts 30, 40, 50 years and beyond? Deepen. Find a way to do what you’ve always done, better. I asked Tami if the day after the lesson, she expects her coloring practice to change. She said definitely, that’s the whole point. I am so excited to be a better stylist, to do coloring better.
As you think about the work of your life, or something that you truly love doing, whether baking or cooking or knitting, or a passionate cause to which you are fully devoted, what would your version of doing coloring better look like? After 30 years, either literally or metaphorically, how could you do your work better? How could you bake or cook or knit better? How do you advocate for the just cause you believe in better? Being engaged in that project is joyful.
I’ll never forget one of the times Micah Goodman stayed with us, in those glory days before the pandemic when he would come to Boston and hundreds of people would come to 385 Ward Street to hear him. One Saturday afternoon, after a typical day of his brilliant lectures, he’s on the sofa reading a book. Not wanting to let him rest, wanting to disturb his thoughts, wanting to intrude on his private time, I asked him: what are you reading? I’ll never forget what he said. I’m reading The Case For God by Karen Armstrong. “I want to learn more about God.” Here was Micah, already a best-selling author on God in Israel, at the end of a day where he had delivered multiple speeches and classes, unwinding by reading more about God, because it is a source of joy to figure out how to do what we do even better.
Tami’s Torah about learning how to color better also has a very personal and emotional resonance for all of us. Think about the most important relationships of your life. The question is: how do we do those long-term relationships even better? How can we be a better parent to our child, a better child to our parent, a better brother or sister to our brothers and sisters, a better spouse to our spouse?
There is a wonderful book written by a psychiatrist named Francine Klagsbrun entitled Married People: Staying Together in the age of Divorce. She meets with long-married couples, couples married 40, 50, 60 years and beyond, who see themselves as very happy. They did not stick together because it was too hard or complicated to uncouple. They chose to stick together because after all those years, they still loved being married to one another. What was their secret sauce?
I first read this book 30 years ago. It came to my mind again after I heard Tami’s observation. I took it off my book shelf again, and I read Francine Klagsbrun as saying some version of what Tami said: we deepen in place by learning new ways to do what we have done better. She writes:
Change is inevitable in marriage as in life. Partners become involved in work and pull back from work; children are born, go to school, leave home; spouses age, get sick, drop old interests, take on new ones, make new friends, live through the sorrows of old ones; parents get old and die; couples move from apartments to houses and back to apartments, from one town to another. Changes bring anxieties and disequilibrium. Yet in the stronger marriages, each partner is able to make “midcourse corrections, almost like astronauts,” as one psychiatrist put it. That is, they are able both to adapt to the change that is happening in the marriage or in the other partner and, when called for, to change themselves. p. 279.
What used to work, no longer works, or no longer works as effectively. How can I change it up so that it can work better?
That is a good lens for a long-term marriage. That is a good lens for a long-term hair stylist. That is a good lens for all of us, for all we do and all we love, in an ever-changing world. If we can figure out how to do our own version of coloring hair better, that is joy that will last through the years. Chag sameakh.