refreshing laughter by which it is greeted is like the meal
prepared for the returning favorite. Is Israel to have no seat at the
table? Israel, the first to recognize that the eternal truths of life
are innate in man, the first to teach, as his chief message, how to
reconcile man with himself and the world, whenever these truths suffer
temporary obscuration? So viewed, humor is the offspring of love, and
also mankind's redeemer, inasmuch as it paralyzes the influence of anger
and hatred, emanations from the powers of change and finality, by laying
bare the eternal principles and "sweet reasonableness" hidden even in
them, and finally stripping them of every adjunct incompatible with the
serenity of absolute truth. In whatever mind humor, that is, love and
cheerfulness, reigns supreme, the inconsistencies and imperfections of
life, all that bears the impress of mutability, will gently and
gradually be fused into the harmonious perfection of absolute, eternal
truth. Mists sometimes gather about the sun, but unable to extinguish
his light, they are forced to serve as his mirror, on which he throws
the witching charms of the Fata Morgana. So, when the eternal truths of
life are veiled, opportunity is made for humor to play upon and
irradiate them. In precise language, humor is a state of perfect
self-certainty, in which the mind serenely rises superior to every petty
disturbance.

This placidity shed its soft light into the modest academies of the
rabbis. Wherever a ray fell, a blossom of Haggadic folklore sprang up.
Every occurrence in life recommends itself to their loving scrutiny:
pleasures and follies of men, curse turned into blessing, the ordinary
course of human events, curiosities of Israel's history and mankind's.
As instances of their method, take what Midrashic folklore has to say
concerning the creation of the two things of perennial interest to
poets: wife and wine.

When the Lord God created woman, he formed her not from the head of man,
lest she be too proud; not from his eye, lest she be too coquettish; not
from his ear, lest she be too curious; not from his mouth, lest she be
too talkative; not from his heart, lest she be too sentimental; not from
his hands, lest she be too officious; nor from his feet, lest she be an
idle gadabout; but from a subordinate part of man's anatomy, to teach
her: "Woman, be thou modest!"

With regard to the vine, the Haggada tells us that when Father Noah was
about to plan