The mitzvah of being joyous in the Land…

“And when you come to the Land that Hashem your Gd is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and settle in it…. you will be joyous in all the goodness that Hashem your Gd gives you” (Deuteronomy 26:1-11).

This always seems to me to be possibly the strangest, most surprising and difficult mitzvah in the Torah… “And you will be joyous”… ? Is it possible to command joy? To be happy on command? Or maybe, we misunderstood and it’s a promise? that this is how we will be, joyous? Then what’s going on?

Then I wonder if we, in our 21st century, make too much of it and the Torah’s intention is that joy is like any mitzvah – something that we should do. It may not be easy, so what; so are other mitzvot and the level of difficulty is not an issue. On the contrary: maybe, the fact that it is a mitzvah means that it is in our hands. And just like with all other mitzvot, even if we don’t “succeed” 100%, at least, we can do.

Which of course brings us to a very current conversation. For already on the not-so-distant horizon there’s holiday coming up whose main theme is – joy. And the question that’s being raised is, what to do on Simchat Torah this year, exactly one year to the war?

Not long ago, I came across a collection of articles called “Ha-Ma’ayan – expanded Issue on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War” published in honor of the month of Tishrei 5783 / 2023, right before the war that broke out on that Shabbat of Shmini Atzerat / Simchat Torah. Among the authors, Rav Dr. (Lt. Col. In the reserves) Mordechai Halperin who was a young rabbi at the Golan Yeshiva, just established in Moshav Ramat Magshimim. The rabbi tells about the supersonic “booms” in the middle of Yom Kippur morning prayer, the airplanes overhead, and the heavy bombing when hundreds of shells rained on the moshav all through that afternoon.

Rav Halperin was recruited that Sat night and transferred to Sinai at the head of a rabbinic military force designated for the removal and proper burial of bodies from the combat zone. In his essay he describes countless difficult moral, human and halachic dilemmas during the war. One of them is when he’s told – on Shmini Atzeret / Simchat Torah (5733 / 1973) – to go out in order to clear bodies of soldiers in an IDF post that was conquered by Egyptians on Yom Kippur, and then again conquered by the IDF. He opens the paragraph about this with the words: “On Simchat Torah, after the completion of the hakafot (dancing around with the Torah)”…..

I will not go into the fascinating issue itself. Those I read after I recovered from these first few words “On Simchat Torah, after the completion of the hakafot”... Simchat Torah was less than two weeks after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War; we were still in the middle of this war, which comprised of a surprise attack on two fronts at the same time; a war that in three weeks will claim almost twice as many deaths as we have experienced in this whole last year, at a time that the State of Israel had between a third and a half of its current population today. You may wonder with me and ask, Rabbi, excuse me, with all due respect, what are we doing with Simchat Torah and the hakafot at such a time?

It blew my mind, so I decided to write Rav Halperin and asked him: Were there hakafot on that holiday of Simchat Torah, 1973? And he answered: “There were regular hakafot with an adjustment to the daily schedule of the soldiers and officers. No one thought of forgoing Simchat Torah. On the contrary. The joy was strong and enormous in the participants’ hearts. So, for example, we went to the dangerous Suez Canal area without feeling fear and without dread”…

I am not suggesting to anyone what “they” should do this year on Simchat Torah. Each community will decide what and how is right to express this day with its members, but I would like to take this opportunity and think about it, in conjunction with this week’s Torah portion.

Rav Chaim Soloveitchik wrote about 80 years ago: “Simchat Torah… the holiday is not called “Simchat Israel” (i.e. the joy of Israel) but Simchat Torah (that is – the joy of the Torah), and it is not (that important) that Israel rejoice in the Torah, but the main thing is that the Torah rejoices in Israel.”

“And when you (vehaya) come to the Land”… It is said in the Midrash that “every place where it is said in the Tanach “and when you” as in “vehaya” – it is a joyful language (Beresheet Rabbah 42:2). The Or Hachayim, who came to the Land of Israel from Morocco in 1742, said about our verse: “we’re using here a language of joy because one cannot be joyful except by dwelling in the Land”…

“To be joyful by dwelling in the Land”?? How? Don’t you hear news? It’s just impossible!!

True. Along with the wonderful future in the Land, Moses also devotes an entire long and painful chapter to the second set of blessings and curses. The curses are so terrible that it is difficult to recover from them. That is why afterwards Moses wants to remind the People of the good that Gd has done for them thus far – nevertheless and in spite of everything, so many miracles happened to the! Will the Children of Israel be able to see them?

Moses says to them: “Yet, Gd has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear till this very day” (ibid 29:3). Till this very day! That is, 40 years after you’ve left Egypt!! Only now, little by little, they are beginning to comprehend some of what the Exodus from Egypt was… The Talmud says: From this our sages learned that “a person does not fully understand his teacher’s words until 40 years have passed” (tractate Avodah Zarah 5:b), that is, to understand the present one needs time, one needs some perspective. And meanwhile, we do have all sorts of mitzvot…

The Torah told us, “Vashmachta” – and you will be joyous… Were things “better” during the time of the destruction of the First or Second Temple? Or in the Middle Ages? Maybe during the Expulsion from Spain? In the Khmelnitsky Riots or the Holocaust? Of course not. In each of these eras in our history there have been terrible tragedies on a personal and national level, and I am not diminishing – them nor of what we are going through nowadays.

One of my students said to me, ‘maybe, we only have to be joyous with the good; if it’s not good, then vesamachta is not needed!!
But I don’t think so. I hear that we are being asked, invited – commanded – to look, not only at what is missing, painful, hurtful, negative, but precisely – at all the good. Being joyous when everything is good and perfect and all our desires come true – that’s easy. But to gather ourselves, davka now, and be able to recognize and rejoice in the good that there is – and there still is so much – maybe this is the mitzvah we do need now.

May we have a Shabbat Shalom and good tidings.