Jewish Life Digital Edition September 2015 | Page 72

SUKKOT 5776 68 JEWISH LIFE ■ ISSUE 88 Believe it or not, there’s actually a mitzvah from the Torah just to be happy on each of the festivals: Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos! Simply amazing, the Creator of the Universe cares about our feelings; He actually commands us to be happy and to enjoy His festivals. ows, poor people, and converts happy as well, which is why almost every yom tov sees a push for an increase in tzedakah to help make this possible. We can’t understand why Hashem commands what he does, but we can perhaps get a ta’am – a taste, a flavour. In the same way that when an expert tastes a gourmet dish, he can take note of some of the flavours – is that ginger? Orange? Cinnamon? – but he can’t possibly perceive everything that went into the dish or its measure, or even the reason for it, so too we can get a sense, some inkling of what Hashem may have had in mind, even though we can’t fathom everything He had in mind behind any particular mitzvah. The Sefer HaChinuch explains8 regarding this mitzvah to rejoice on the festivals that our nature requires us to rejoice at times, just as we need food, rest, and sleep, so too a person needs to rejoice, to celebrate. L’havdil, this is largely why the non-Jewish world created things like the coliseum, a place where people could go and safely channel their pent-up energies in a way that wouldn’t be harmful – well, provided you weren’t the guy being served up to the lions. G-d wished to give us an opportunity to rejoice in a way by which we could earn merit, so He commanded us to rejoice for His sake and He set aside certain times of the year for festivals, in order for us to remember during those time periods the miracles and goodness that He did for us. And He commanded us to provide our physical selves with things that our physical nature needs to rejoice. In other words, we connect the satisfying of our need for rejoicing with remembering Hashem. If a person fails to bring joy to himself and his household and the poor on each of the annual festivals, then he actually transgresses this commandment. Stunning! IT’ S EASY – ALBEIT CHALLENGING – TO BE A JEW Our view of G-d and His Torah has unfortunately been largely influenced by the non-Jewish religions and cultures that surround us. As we can see, the Torah actually takes into account our nature. One of the claims of Christianity is that G-d erred, chas v’shalom (G-d forbid), by issuing so many commandments, by creating a Torah that was, in fact, impossible to keep in its entirety. The irony is that it actually is impossible to keep all of the Torah’s commandments, but not for the reason given by its critics! We have 613 commandments, but very few apply to any in- PHOTOGRAPH: WIKIPEDIA.ORG; SUPPLIED these mitzvos so that we’re able to easily channel our energies and even our emotions into them. Believe it or not, there’s actually a mitzvah5 from the Torah just to be happy on each of the festivals: Pesach, Shavuos, and Sukkos! Simply amazing, the Creator of the Universe cares about our feelings; He actually commands us to be happy and to enjoy His festivals. So how do we fulfil such a mitzvah? Our Sages teach6 that included in the mitzvah of rejoicing on the festivals is: eating meat and drinking wine, wearing new clothes, and having fruits and sweets. In other words, a man fulfils this mitzvah by making the members of his household happy and he does this by giving to each person what suits him. The Talmud says that for men, this is meat and wine, and for women, this is beautiful clothes, and for children, this is fruits and sweets. And the Talmud7 actually notes that the women in Bavel (Babylonia) preferred one style of garment, and the women in Eretz Yisroel (the land of Israel) preferred another. In other words, the women had different tastes, and this had to be taken into account in order to ensure each received what would actually make her happy, meaning the happiness in question is subjectively measured, not one-size-fitsall. Dressing up for yom tov is something that makes a person happy! Our Sages teach that we should have what makes us happy, so if a person prefers fish to meat, then he should have fish on yom tov rather than meat. And this mitzvah actually extends beyond our own households and includes making orphans, wid-