42 | APRIL 25 • 2024

M

oshe teaches us again and
again that joy is what we
should feel in the Land of
Israel, the land given to us by God, the
place to which the whole
of Jewish life — since the
days of Avraham and Sarah
— has been a journey.
There, says Moshe, you will
celebrate the love between
a small and otherwise
insignificant people and
the God who, taking them
as His own, lifted them to greatness.
It will also be there, says Moshe, that
the entire tangled narrative of Jewish
history will become lucid, where a
whole people will sing together, wor-
ship together and celebrate the festivals
together, knowing that history is not
about empire or conquest, nor society
about hierarchy and power; that com-
moner and king, Israelite and Kohein,
are all equal in the sight of God, all voic-
es in His holy choir, all dancers in the
circle at whose center is the radiance of
the Divine. This is what the covenant is
about: the transformation of the human
condition through what Wordsworth
called “the deep power of joy.”
Happiness, the philosopher Aristotle
once said, is the ultimate purpose of
human existence. We desire many

things, but usually as a means to some-
thing else. Only one thing is always
desirable in itself, and never for the sake
of something else, namely happiness.
There is a similar idea in Judaism. The
biblical word for happiness, ashrei, is the
first word of the book of Tehillim and
a key word of our daily tefillot. But far
more often, Tanach speaks about sim-
chah, joy — and this is different from
happiness. Happiness is something you
can feel alone, but joy, in Tanach, is
something you share with others. In one
of the most extraordinary lines in the
Torah, Moshe says that curses will befall
the nation not because they served idols
or abandoned God but “because you
did not serve the Lord your God with joy
and gladness out of the abundance of
all things” (Devarim 28:47). A failure to
rejoice is the first sign of decadence and
decay.
There are other differences. Happiness
is about a lifetime, but joy lives in the
moment. Happiness tends to be a cool
emotion, but joy makes you want to

dance and sing. It’s hard to feel happy
in the midst of uncertainty. But you can
still feel joy.
And yes, life is full of grief and dis-
appointments, problems and pains, but
beneath it all is the wonder that we are
here, in a universe filled with beauty,
among people each of whom carries
within them a trace of the face of God.
Kierkegaard once wrote: “It takes
moral courage to grieve. It takes reli-
gious courage to rejoice.” I believe that
with all my heart. So I am moved by the
way Jews, who know what it is to walk
through the valley of the shadow of
death, still see joy as the supreme reli-
gious emotion.
Every day we begin our morning
prayers with Modeh Ani (I Thank), fol-
lowed by a flurry of thanks. We thank
God that we are here, with a world to
live in, with family and friends to love
and be loved by, and that we are about
to start a day full of possibilities, in
which, by acts of loving kindness, we
allow God’s Presence to flow through
us into the lives of others. Joy helps
heal some of the wounds of our injured,
troubled world.

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org.

Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

QUESTIONS TO PONDER
What is the difference between
happiness and joy?
Which do you think most people
are striving for?
How can you achieve joy in your life?

The Deep
Power of Joy