Authentically Bright Moments

The late and lamented Rahsaan Roland Kirk, an eccentric, blind jazz virtuoso, famous for playing different kinds of wind instruments, often several at the same time, performed and recorded a piece of his called “Bright Moments,” a joyful assertion that, despite his blindness, he enjoyed and shared such moments in his music. He finishes one recording of the song, whose only words are “bright moments,” repeated over and over, by saying, “These bright moments is for all of the wonderful people in the universe that has never known anything about bright moments, so check it out.”

In his rambling and wise introduction to the piece, Kirk admonishes us to recognize and honor the bright moments in our lives, privileged occasions of exhilaration or deep contentment. The occasional experience of these elusive bright moments can be damaging to our mental stability, addicting us, especially when we are young, to high risk thrill-seeking. Maturity acknowledges that life must consist of both light and dark moments, with a lot of gray moments in between, though we may always imagine an ecstatic existence consisting solely of bright moments, as the Jewish grace after meals puts it: “A day that is totally Sabbath and perpetual rest.” To put it in terms of authenticity, a bright moment is an authentic one, and the yearning for bright moments is a yearning for authenticity.

The Jewish Mussaf (additional) prayer, recited on Sabbath and festival mornings, is an expression of yearning for the Temple and the restoration of sacrifices: “You instated the Sabbath and desired its sacrifices” – the idea being that authentic worship entails animal sacrifice, and all worship since it became impossible to kill animals in the Temple, has been metaphysically inauthentic and will be so until the Temple is restored, and the Priests can splatter blood on the walls of the altar again (as another hopeful prayer has it).

This idealization of a period in the past is both very widespread – Donald Trump won the election by promising to make America great again – and a historical absurdity. It points to dissatisfaction with the present, the feeling that things were once much better and could be much better, if only... And why were things so much better in that imaginary past of bright moments? Because existence was authentic.

Three sorts of people are free of anxiety because their lives are inauthentic: the deeply religious (who are convinced they are living an authentic life), the shallowly indifferent (who don't think reality TV is inauthentic), and the enlightened wise (who understand that authenticity not a useful concept). Those of us who are too skeptical to be religious, too thoughtful to be indifferent, but not wise enough to be enlightened are troubled by the inauthenticity of our lives. We are prone to existential anxiety, which means we are also susceptible to existential blackmail.

For example, the present government of Israel is promoting and financing a program for bolstering “Jewish identity.” Although only a minority of the Jewish population of the country practices orthodox Judaism, the identity being stuffed down the country's throat is entirely that of orthodox, rabbinical Judaism. This is possible because a great many secular Israeli Jews, plagued by existential anxiety, are convinced that orthodox Judaism, the kind of Judaism ostensibly practiced before the onslaught of modernism, is authentic Judaism. They might be unwilling or unable to accept the orthodox way of life, but they can't help but admire it.

 So they are trapped, unable to resist something they know to be founded upon error and superstition. If only we could free ourselves of the yearning for authenticity, we could also free ourselves from the rigidity of orthodoxies.