Doron Kornbluth
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 22, 2024
“… simcha is related to who I am, who I can be, and who I am connected to.”
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?
… [To read the full article, click here]