I’ve always looked forward to Simchat Torah. This year? Not so much. You can guess why.
The question is: How can we be happy this Simchat Torah?
In a way, we’ve been struggling with different versions of this question for over a year now. How can we be happy post Oct. 7? We each try to find our own way to deal with both the pain and the needs of the situation. Sometimes we are successful, sometimes not.
Some people avoid the news or avoid letting it affect them. They just “can’t deal” with the stress and pain. In this way, most of the time, their daily lives go on quite normally.
Others go to the opposite extreme. They rarely allow themselves to smile or laugh. After all, we are engaged in an existential war on seven fronts, Jews are being attacked around the world, we have few friends, there are still dozens of hostages in Gaza, and the world is on fire. What’s there to be happy about? How do these “honest yet depressed” people relate to the famous statement of hassidic master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, “It is a great mitzvah to be happy?”
Are happiness and simcha identical?
“He wasn’t referring to times like these,” they may suggest. What about mankind’s psychological need for happiness? “It will need to wait: Today, while there are hostages in Gaza, we have no right to be happy.”
While quite understandable, each of these “extreme” reactions (ignore the pain or “live” it) has problems. In our present reality, feeling too much happiness reeks of insensitivity and disconnect at a time when we need to be more sensitive and connected than ever. Feeling too much sadness risks depression and paralysis when we need to be more highly motivated and high-functioning than ever.
I’ve come across an approach that might help. The core of the idea centers on definitions. Interestingly, there is no clear definition of happiness. It means different things to different people. Some connect it to a long-term feeling of contentment, while others focus more on moments of joy. Some relate it to a sense of completion, while others focus more on the mood we feel when things “go right.”
Even researchers can’t agree on what happiness actually is. Indeed, for years, the field of positive Psychology has been trying to come to a common definition of happiness in order to allow for consistent study, comparison, and application of findings across different cultures and contexts. The goal remains elusive. In a sense, we’re all still trying to figure out what the American Declaration of Independence was referring to when it wrote of the inalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – and we’re still struggling to achieve it.
While definitions in this area are hard to come by, some distinctions are not. Think of it this way: Are happiness and simcha identical? In my mind, the two words do not conjure up quite the same images. Personally, when I hear the word “happy,” I think of someone smiling, while the word “simcha” doesn’t necessarily make me think of the same thing. While this possible distinction is only a small detail in the scheme of things, it is a helpful tool: Happiness and Simcha are not identical.
While the meaning of the word “happiness” is elusive, the word “simcha” is usually understood to refer to a deeper form of joy. It’s not just an emotional state but a psychological, ontological, and even religious experience that comes from fulfilling my purpose and feeling connected to something greater than myself.
As pointed out by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a prominent 19th-century German-Jewish scholar, the very word “simcha” is connected to the Hebrew word tzmichah – growth – which we recognize today by the common Hebrew word for plant, tzemach. Simcha is related to development, potential, and connection to the future.
This implies that simcha is related to who I am, who I can be, and who I am connected to. In her classic book, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, Yaffa Eliach wrote of an interaction between a Nazi officer and an elderly Jewish man in the ghetto. Watching the Jew being beaten down by his comrades, the officer mockingly asks him, “What does it feel like to be a Jew now?” The old Jew, with remarkable resilience and dignity, replied, “It’s better than being a Nazi.”
This story has stuck with me for years. Think about it: what nation would you want to be part of today?
While there are many individuals (millions) around the world who continue to be heroic partners to Israel and the Jews, and of course we have tremendous gratitude for the incredible and ongoing American support we have received, still, it is hard to find a “nation” whose conduct and rhetoric over the last year have been any better than shameful. The spineless, sniveling, cowardly self-abasement to admitted and proud terrorists and their supporters that we have seen by the vast majority of contemporary news organizations, governments, celebrities, and the woke left has been as breathtaking as it is depressing.
As a whole, only one nation has refused to join the Hamas / Hezbollah / Iran bandwagon. Only one nation has clearly and consistently stood up for victims rather than perpetrators, for truth rather than falsehood, and for freedom rather than fascism: the nation of Israel.
I am prouder than ever to be a Jew, and I am more “sameach” than ever to be on this side of the battle between good and evil. On many fronts, we have fought back against the onslaught of Iranian-backed evil. Furthermore, the country and its people are united in continuing the fight; stopping now would be a capitulation to those openly and proudly working towards a Taliban-like caliphate in the entire Middle East, Europe, and eventually the whole world.
Our resilience today is, when you think about it, not surprising. Over 3,000 years, we have never given up and we will never do so. We are the oldest existing nation on the planet. With an incredible generation of young people standing up for us and some help from Heaven, we will outlast the ayatollahs.
As Mark Twain pointed out in 1899, many nations throughout history “have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.”
Often, we’ve done this alone. Almost 4,000 years ago, Abraham and Sarah stood alone. Roughly 3,000 years ago, the non-Jewish prophet Balaam called us “the Nation that dwells apart.” Fast forward to 2024: Last month, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy released a new book called Israel Alone and great Israel-defender Douglas Murray declared Israel was essentially “alone” fighting the evil of Iran.
We are in an existential battle, and we are largely alone. But we shouldn’t be depressed. In the world we live in, the region we live in, and the time we live in, we simply can’t afford to be depressed – although it is often inappropriate to be “happy.” The answer? We can – and must – be “sameach.”
Simcha is a whole different matter. It is a religious and psychological imperative. Simcha focuses me on who I am, who I belong to, and why I’m here. When I think along these lines, I realize that I am sameach to be alive, to be in Israel, and to be a Jew. I couldn’t be prouder.
On Simchat Torah, I will even dance and sing about it.
The writer is a lecturer, author of Why Be Jewish? and a cofounder of Mosaica Press., 2024).