An acquaintance of mine was telling me that this High Holiday period was the first time in his life he had ever worn a kittel to shul. I asked him how he felt when he was wearing it.

“It was a wonderful feeling” he said. “Great fun.”

“Fun?” I asked. “Wearing the kittel was fun?”

“Well not fun exactly. What I mean is that it was enjoyable.”

Hardly an adequate translation but I realized that here was the measuring rod of contemporary Jewish life. If a thing is fun to do if it is enjoyable we do it. If is not fun we don’t do it. A Pesach Seder is fun observing Shabbos is not. Friday night dinner is fun daily davening is not. Chanukah candles are fun fasting on Tisha B’Av is not. If only Moshe Rabbeinu had inserted more fun things into the Torah we might have had fully observant Jews all over the world — especially if he had slightly rephrased the First Commandment: “I am the L d thy G-d Who took you out of thelandofEgyptin order for you to have fun.”

It is not that the Torah negates enjoyment. The word “simchah” is all-pervasive in Jewish life. We have Simchas Torah and a major Yom Tov — Succos — is called “the time of our simchah.” There is an outright Torah mitzvah to be joyous: “You shall be joyous in your festivals” (Devarim 16:14). And note how many words for joy besides simchah there are in the Tanach: oneg chedvah gil masos sasson tzahalah. We may not be a fun religion by the dictionary definition of amusing or entertaining but we are certain a religion of joy. The prophets of old could not prophesy unless they were in a state of joy. No wonder that the root word simchah is found almost 400 times in Tanach — but “fun”? Not even once. Because fun is ephemeral an evanescent amusement a light entertainment. Jewish joy goes much deeper than that

Nevertheless I recall people who resigned from our Orthodox shul in the US because “it was no longer fun.” To my great chagrin a young lady once complained to me that she was not “enjoying” the restrictions of her year of mourning for her father and a man told me that he “enjoyed” the eulogy I delivered for his wife. Remember Narcissus he who fell in love with his own image reflected in the water? He set off ripples that continue to our own day even in the religious realm. My former congregants were in effect asking “How do I feel about G-d?” instead of asking “How does G-d feel about me?”

To be fair perhaps all these misinformed solecisms reflect a paucity of language rather than paucity of sincere feeling. Because the subtle differences between different levels of pleasure are hard to express they are all bundled together under one catch-all rubric: fun or enjoyment. This is a reflection of our times in which hedonism is the major “mitzvah ” the standard by which life is judged.

The fact however is that language is a reflection of one’s thinking: inadequate language reflects inadequate thought. Solipsism is language stunted by the self. The self stunts the language and in return the language stunts the self.

And let us be honest these solipsistic “Me thoughts” somehow creep into the decision-making processes even of very pious folks. For example: Do I choose to daven in a little shtiebel on Shabbos instead of in a normative shul because in a shtiebel I feel a closer connection to my Creator — or because in a shtiebel I can get home 30 minutes earlier? In my choosing where to daven is b’rov am hadras Melech — “in the multitude of people is the King’s glory” (Mishlei 14:28) — a factor in the equation? Would the larger community benefit from my being part of the main shul and would my presence make an impact on others less learned than I? How great a role does personal enjoyment play in my choice? And if it does play a major role how am I different from the person who left my shul because it was no longer fun? We must all recognize that only a thin razor’s edge separates our service of the other and our service of the self.

To wear a kittel because it is fun is incongruous. Are our own religious decisions any less incongruous?