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-