Batsheva Leah Weinstein
A few months ago the latest stage launched in a prolonged war. Israelis were running in and out of bomb shelters and endured sleepless nights as ballistic missiles from Iran lit up the skies, threatening death and destruction. Over the past two years, we have suffered the deaths of over 500 Israeli soldiers, in addition to the almost 1200 citizens and soldiers murdered on October 7th. We have cried over the pain of 251 hostages, and heard testimonies of the inhuman conditions they were subjected to in Gaza. We await the release of the remaining hostages daily.
Yet despite our anger, our frustrations, our pain and our trauma – our joy is not canceled.
On October 7th, we still had Simkhat Torah. During the weeks that followed, we still celebrated weddings and bnei mitzvah. True, they looked a little different. But we know how to hold onto multiple emotions, how to embrace the whole gamut of human experience.
On the face of it, this is shocking. How do we continue to rejoice and find pleasure in the small things in life when our world is falling apart? How do we create joy in an ocean of sorrow?
The question of how to create happiness when our overwhelming emotion is suffering is not a new one. The Torah commands us, “And you should rejoice on your festivals” (Deuteronomy 16:4). The Talmud teaches that even a mourner, who generally engages in mourning practices, is required to rejoice on a festival (Moed Katan 14b). This seems like a nearly impossible demand. Can the Torah really expect us to generate emotions artificially, manifesting joy amidst deep suffering?
The Talmud (Pesahim 109a) concretizes this mitzvah, citing different opinions of how a person fulfills the obligation. According to one opinion, men rejoice with wine and women with new clothing. According to another opinion, during the time of the First and Second Temples everyone celebrated by eating meat, but now everyone celebrates by drinking wine.
Fascinatingly, the Talmud does not focus on a person’s inner state of being. Rather, it stresses physical, outward actions. It seems, then, that we are not asked to generate any emotions but simply to go through the motions. Perhaps internal emotion is irrelevant. We can be in a state of deep sorrow, and yet still fulfill the command to rejoice, still go through the motions, still show that we are not inhibited by our emotions, but can rise above them. Stoically, we can celebrate our holidays while experiencing deep pain for our brothers and sisters stuck in Gazan tunnels.
This approach also applies to the command to love a fellow Jew. There, too, though the instruction “you shall love your fellow as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) seems to require generating a feeling of love, the rabbinic commentaries focus instead on actions that reflect an expression of love – visiting the sick, comforting the mourner, accompanying the dead, engaging in burial, and rejoicing with a bride and groom (Misneh Torah, Laws of Mourning 14:1). All these deeds are possible to perform without experiencing accompanying internal emotions. Halakhah, perhaps, does not attempt to control the inner state, as long as the external conduct reflects the desired feeling. The Torah recognizes that controlling one’s inner state is nearly impossible. Yet life must go on; we must sometimes act in ways that do not reflect how we are feeling inside.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this approach is not adopted by many of the commentators with regards to the mitzvah to rejoice. They maintain that the Torah makes even higher demands of us – to actually produce an internal sensation of joy. In this mitzvah, the Torah teaches that by engaging in physical actions we can artificially manufacture emotions that did not previously exist – by eating meat, drinking wine, and wearing new clothing we create a feeling of happiness. This notion is highlighted by an opinion cited by Rabbi Eliezer of Metz, (Yere’im 427), a 12th century scholar, who says that in addition to the specific Talmudic examples, a person can fulfill the obligation to be happy by engaging in any enjoyable, joy-inducing action. Sefer HaHinukh, an anonymous 13th century work, frequently invokes this philosophical principle of Jewish law, that “aharei ha-pe’ulot nimshakhim ha-levavot,” meaning that the heart, our internal state, is drawn after our actions (see, for example, Mitzvah 16). Through drinking wine and eating meat, we can create happiness even in the heart of a mourner.
What is particularly striking about this understanding of the mitzvah, however, is that we are well aware that physical pleasures do not cause lasting happiness. The command, then, is not to produce a lasting emotion but rather a momentary sensation. Despite overwhelming grief, it is within our capability to construct pockets of joy in which to experience some happiness.
We find a similar sentiment regarding the emotion of sadness itself. Following the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, the Jewish people wanted to go to extreme measures to mourn, including never eating meat and never drinking wine (Bava Batra 60b). Rabbi Yehoshua, a rabbinic leader of the period, convinced them that this kind of unbounded mourning was unsustainable and taught them that the proper way to mourn was to allow for small reminders of loss in all parts of their lives. When a person plasters a house, he must leave one section unplastered. When a person has a feast, he must leave one dish out. When a woman adorns herself, she must leave off one piece of jewelry. These practices use concrete reminders to produce a momentary feeling of absence and loss during moments that are meant to be happy. Similarly, a mourner cannot manufacture sustained happiness, nor is that the goal. However, through other aforementioned actions, one can create moments of joy amidst his sorrow.
Perhaps this is why the Torah does not attempt to command an internal sensation of love for a fellow Jew. Love of another should be a sustained emotion rather than a momentary one. Since that is impossible to manufacture artificially, Halakhah is forced to hold back from requiring emotions and instead requires only outward expressions.
However, it is imprecise to describe these rituals as actively creating a feeling of sorrow. The customs described – leaving part of the house unplastered and leaving out a part of a meal or one piece of jewelry – do not cause one to be upset. Indeed, a person is still excited about building his new house, and still enjoys a lavish meal. Rather, these elements cause a noticeable lack in an otherwise pure sensation. Marring the completeness of the happiness creates a space for another opposing emotion to be expressed and experienced. Sorrow already exists by dint of the fact that the Temple is in ruin; the sensitive Jew feels it deep within his soul. The change in behavior produces a space from which grief can emerge.
Based on this model, perhaps it is impossible to generate an emotion artificially, even temporarily, and therefore the Torah cannot command that. The approach instead is to tap into an emotion that already exists. We are complex beings, such that even while experiencing immense joy, we are nevertheless aware of the tragedy that the Beit HaMikdash is in ruins. Often we try to suppress contradictory feelings. However, we can use concrete reminders to allow this complexity to emerge. At our time of rejoicing – when building a new house, enjoying a feast, or dressing up in jewelry – we remove some of the happiness and tap into the sadness that already exists innate within us.
Perhaps rejoicing on a festival can be understood in the same way. Despite our suffering, the festival itself provides a presence of joy that we can tap into. Through our actions, we can then create a space into which happiness can emerge. This approach is suggested by some of the commentators. Rabbi Yosef Hayyim suggests that the purpose of drinking wine is to cause one to forget financial worries which might have been exacerbated as a result of increased spending for the holiday (Ben Yehoyada Pesahim 109a). Rabbi Shlomo Luria asserts that wine removes the pain of exile which prevents a person from being able to truly experience the delight of the festival (Yam Shel Shlomo Beitzah 2:5). According to both, the purpose of the wine is to remove sadness. This enables happiness to emerge, thus fulfilling the command to rejoice. Similarly, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sofer understands the obligation to be happy to mean that one is not allowed to talk about sad things or engage in anything that will cause a person pain or worry (Kaf HaHayyim Orah Hayyim 529:2). It is noteworthy that he does not require people to talk of happy things. Removing that which would cause grief is sufficient to allow for the already existing joy to permeate one’s existence.
According to Sefer HaHinukh (Mitzvah 488), this is one purpose of the festivals. Just as a person needs to eat and sleep, so too a person needs happiness. The Torah gives us the outlet to rejoice on festivals so that this natural human need can be fulfilled in the service of God. In contrast to the approach that the Torah commands us to artificially manufacture feelings foreign to oneself, this approach recognizes the sensitivity to human nature that the Torah shows by enabling us to express our true emotions.
Throughout these past two years, Jews suffering the war in Israel and historic antisemitism in the diaspora have neither just acted in ways that express happiness, nor have we just artificially manufactured joy. Rather, we have looked deep inside and found that happiness and hope continue to exist, despite our pain and suffering. This has been highlighted by countless stories featured often in the news and via social media of simple expressions of happiness amidst the fear and terror. One recent example is the video[1] of a man sitting in a house full of rubble playing the piano, miraculously left untouched. He plays and sings the following words – “Hashem yitbarakh tamid ohev oti ve-tamid yihyeh li rak tov” – “God always loves me, and I will always have only good.” These profound moments of joy are what the Torah intends for us. If our sadness is genuine, it won’t leave us, even for a moment. Yet we can still make space for other feelings. We can choose to create pockets of joy in our life at the same time as other genuine albeit contradictory emotions.
[1] Published at “MOVING FOOTAGE: Man Sits On Piano In His Destroyed Home Playing ה’ יתברך תמיד אוהב אותי,” Yeshiva World News (June 19, 2025), available at
Site Operations and Technology by The Berman Consulting Group.