The Height of Absurdity

Monty Python remains one of my favorite sources of comic relief. They find humor in absurdity. Python’s comedy is rooted in a futile search for significance in an incomprehensible universe. Have you seen their movie “The Meaning of Life,” utterly devoted to countenancing the absurd?

Take the Dead Parrot Sketch. A man walks into a pet shop, hoping to return a recently purchased “Norwegian Blue” parrot, which is clearly dead. The shopkeeper, however, refuses to acknowledge that fact. “It’s pining for the fjords,” “It’s resting,” “Stunned,”—his insistence that the dead parrot is alive borders on madness until the customer bangs the petrified bird on the countertop. To make matters worse, the shopkeeper offers the customer a slug in exchange.

The sketch hinges on a basic assumption: that we expect others to see things as they are—or at least as they appear. The pet store proprietor clings to being wrong. But we all know the absurdity of people whose reality ignores facts and disregards truth. This shift from reality transforms the dead parrot sketch into a surreal, comic experience.

Monty Python taps into our deep-seated desire for order and meaning in a universe that refuses to provide either order or meaning. Sometimes, the world seems like that pet shop, doubling down on lies. Your best response may be to bang a dead parrot on the countertop.

The Pythons look at the world and find indifference, chaos, and futility. But instead of despair, they point out how funny that can be.

Life doesn’t always make sense, and we should not pretend it does. So, who is tasked with pointing out life’s absurdities? For one, comedians. Not just the comedians, though—also the rabbis. Comedians would have you believe that absurdity is merely fodder for humor. The world continues being preposterous, just for laughs.

On the other hand, the rabbis witness absurdity and ask you to have belief and faith. For rabbis, it’s not the absurdity of the world that matters, but rather how we respond.

Albert Camus, author of The Stranger, rebelled against escaping from the harshness of the human condition. For him, a true hero accepts that life is bleak and, even, if meaningless, presses forward, nonetheless. Camus’ ideal is Sisyphus, condemned to roll a rock up a mountain daily, only to watch it roll back down that night. Despite the failure, and the absurdity of the task, Sisyphus tries again. Comedians have tried to tackle the tale of Sisyphus but there are very few good jokes about him. There’s this one joke about Sisyphus but it goes on and on and on. . .

Camus finds meaning in struggling each day, even if it is without reward. Camus despised the madness, violence, and oppression of the 20th century. His response was to appreciate living each day, even as we accept the insanity of returning to push rocks up hills followed by the inevitability of death. Judaism is more hopeful than Camus. We believe that life demands we seek better options than pushing a rock up a hill.

Two Jewish holidays focus on responding to life’s absurdity: Yom Kippur and Purim. On Yom Kippur, we ask, “Who shall live, and who shall die?  We rehearse for death by wearing white and fasting. There’s a book in heaven marking our fate and gates that close at day’s end. We are praying for life, while fully confronting death. These rituals may seem farcical. But these rituals help us to focus on ways of responding to the world’s inherent irrationality.

The other holiday of absurdity is Purim. The Zohar, Judaism’s premier mystical text, connects Yom Kippur and Purim. The pairing lies in the name: “Yom HaKippurim,” implying that something absurd or random will happen in the future. The mystics believe that one Yom Kippur to come, we will rejoice and dance, transforming difficulties into delight.

Purim is an absurd story. Esther, a Jew, married the Persian King. When a decree was issued to kill the Jews, she asked her people to fast and pray. (Sort of like Yom Kippur when we fast and pray to avert the decree). Esther revealed her Jewish identity to the King and exposed Haman’s plot to kill the Jews.

The King, in a bizarre twist, issued a new decree allowing the Jews to defend themselves by killing the people originally ordered to destroy them—and the Jews did so. Yes, the world always finds it absurd that Jews can destroy their enemies.

One could interpret Purim as comedy. Rather, I see it as a story of faith and courage. Because sometimes, absurdity, like a King’s proclamation, is neither benign nor comical but rather quite dangerous. Time and again, Jews fought/fight for life in the face of a pointless decree of death. Purim is about faith in the future, taking ownership of Jewish identity at a time when it was imprudent to do so.

Is faith absurd? Rabbi Noah Farkas wrote, “Many philosophers call the idea of faith “‘living in the absurd”’ because we can never truly know life’s meaning.”  Philosophers argue that we discover facts through science, but faith? He wrote: “Faith operates beyond facts. Faith is an adventure, pushing us between comfort and discomfort, from the known to the unknown.” The scientific mind rebels against faith, even as faith makes life more pleasant.

Dr. Alan L. Mittleman, in his 2024 book Absurdity, and Meaning in Contemporary Philosophy and Jewish Thought, takes this idea further. Mittleman shows how Judaism, just like philosophy, grapples with deep doubts and perplexities. Instead of shutting down conversation, Judaism promotes dialogue. We dispel meaninglessness when we engage and when we question the world around us.

As Jews, we are particularly attuned to absurdity, perhaps because of our history – never setting down roots for too long, always somewhat on the periphery of mainstream society. We’ve kept our humor intact, even in dark times. Yet, in Judaism, the punchline is different. We cling to three words that change everything: faith, hope, and love.

Each day you rise in gratitude is an act of faith. Each Jewish child born is a protest of hope. Every mundane act is a demonstration of love. Because of these truths, Judaism cares less about what we accomplish and more about who we are. We aren’t merely like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing rocks up a mountain. Instead, how we live—how we carry our burdens, whether trudging or dancing—expresses our faith, hope, and love for life. That is how we contend with absurdity. That is my connection to God.

God’s expectation? God expects us to live as an expression of love, with reason, intelligence, and compassion, for the sake of a future we may never know.

These are times when embracing our Jewishness may seem absurd to some. We are, after all, a people who are often hated. In Nazi Germany, no Esther was able to avert the decree. Eighty years later, after October 7, there was a wellspring of anti-Semitism yet again.

In 2024, or 5785, Jew-hatred persists. In the three months after Hamas attacked Israel, anti-Semitic acts in the United States rose by 360%. Anti-Semitism is increasing most rapidly among young people. The old tropes and groundless conspiracy theories have taken on new life. All Jews are now viewed as oppressors, not the oppressed. According to the ADL nearly half of Americans believe Jews are irritating, dishonest in business, and have too much power in the United States. And we know this to be absurd.

Absurdity permeates political discourse. Today we face war when there is enough land for peaceful coexistence. You know the region I’m speaking about. The greatest number of displaced people due to war is . . . Sudan. What was the last time you saw protestors blocking the Brooklyn Bridge over the war in Sudan?  Absurd!

Or the gay, Jewish Americans calling out “from the river to the sea” without acknowledging that the Arabs who coined that phrase have no room for them as gay, Jewish, or American.

Or Marjorie Taylor Green, congresswoman from Georgia, who recently said “they control the weather.”

Or Ta Nehisi Coates’ book “The Message”, in which he portrays Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a moral crime, without ever mentioning the history, Hamas, and denying the right of a Jewish State to exist.

Or those Israelis who think they can build walls, knock down houses, and confiscate land to create safe homes for themselves. Yes, Jews can add to the absurdity of this world.

And in a month, people who fear that Jews are imperiled and not powerful might have a Jewish first gentleman in the White House and a Jewish Majority leader in the Senate.

So why draw attention to ourselves when there are so many like Haman who want to destroy us? Why do the members of this tribe double down on this religion? Why would any member of the tribe want to stay in this club?

Because being Jewish transcends the absurdity of life. On our holidays, Judaism affirms human redemption (Yom Kippur), holy insurrection (Passover), and happiness in freedom (Sukkot). The world remains absurd, but our survival and hopefulness defy absurdity and surpass comedy.

Yom Kippur and Purim challenge us to decide: can life’s absurdity inspire courage and faith to make a better future?

Judaism teaches us to stand up for morality. We begin with ourselves. through self-reflection and self-criticism. This is the purpose of Yom Kippur—to infuse meaning into our Jewish identity by railing against the absurdity of hate and oppression, starting with our souls. The purpose of Purim is to connect with Esther’s courage. Like Esther, we must work to change the world because each human being is worthy of a better world.

We Jews, who see miracles in the mundane, and who create solace from sorrow, can rebuild a broken world that seems inextricably broken. We are the legacy of Esther, affirmed on Yom Kippur. We stand proudly as Jews, defying absurdity.

In a world increasingly plagued by uncertainty and chaos, it is easy to feel disoriented, detached, and even lost. Life may seem absurd, and faith may seem meaningless, but I live my life proudly and loudly as – a Jew—a beacon against absurdity and meaninglessness. My Judaism stands as a profound counterforce, a bulwark against madness, offering a framework, direction, and resilience in the face of a chaotic world.

Shabbat, for instance, is a profound response to the chaos of the workweek. This weekly practice offers a powerful reminder that, even in a seemingly irrational world, we can create sacred moments. Kiss your mezuzah when you enter your home in gratitude for a safe place to live, eat in a sukkah next week in recognition of the fragility of this world, show up in support of the hostages as one of the greatest mitzvot in our tradition, and support Jewish-based charities as tzedakah is the easiest way to improve this world.

Rather than resigning ourselves to despair, rather than unceasingly pushing that same rock up that same hill each day, Judaism transcends the absurd. We acknowledge the irrational and the unjust but respond with a commitment to justice, mercy, and hope.

For me, Judaism is a daily declaration that I matter, you matter, and the world matters. This is my expression of hope, my declaration of faith, and my promise to future generations: being Jewish can and will matter—for you even when the world is filled with absurdity.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame