August 10, 2025 • 26 mins
Tehillim 100, Mizmor L’Todah, the “Song of Thanksgiving,” is such a feel-good psalm. It’s got that great line, עִבְדוּ אֶת־ה׳ בְּשִׂמְחָה, “serve God with happiness.” But have you ever wondered: can happiness really be commanded? And what does it mean to connect avodah—service—to joy?
In this episode, we dive into a fresh way of reading the mizmor and explore how joy itself might be the offering God most desires.
Opening music by TAI.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This Qurban is not something Ioffer in place of myself.
I'm part of this too. I bring a part of myself into
this too. And what do I have to bring for
myself? I'm not going to get on the
altar, not going to sacrifice me.
But my inner world, right? My joy, my praise, my song.
Ioffer that to you also as part of this, right?
I'm I'm part of this whole thing.
(00:40):
Welcome back to Tehillim Unveiled.
This is Ari Levison. With I'm Jeremy.
Hey. And we're going to talk about
Miz more Littoda Tehillim 100. Today's episode is sponsored in
honor of my grandfather's birthday by his children and
grandchildren. Happy birthday OPA.
Happy birthday OPA. Mismor la toda, the Psalm of
(01:03):
Thanksgiving. What a feel good Psalm, right?
Totally, totally. Not just for Thanksgiving.
For all year. Shoot.
We released it too early. Just kidding.
But is it such a feel good song?Let's quickly just read it.
It's a short mismor, just 5 verses long.
Mismorla Toda Harula Shim Cola Aritz a Psalm of Thanksgiving
(01:24):
kala to Hashem all of the earth,if do it Hashem besimgra Bo
lefanov dernana serve Hashem with gladness, come before him
with joyous song de U Ki Hashem Who elohim, who asanu veloan
asluamo vitson marito. Know that Hashem, He is God, He
made us, we are His, His people and the sheep of His pasture.
(01:47):
Bo sharab betoda chatsirotov bittila hodulo bar hushimo enter
his gates with Thanksgiving, Hiscourts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name, Kitova do neither
olamhastova adorvador munato, for Hashem is good.
His kindness endures forever, and from generation to
generation is His faithfulness. It's got this great line, you do
(02:11):
ET Hashem basimka serve God withhappiness.
But that's kind of a a tough idea.
I mean, especially, but the way we interpret it, right, the idea
that the Torah would mandate happiness.
I mean, if you think about Rabi Nakhlan takes this to the extent
of saying mitzvah godola Leo, this seems tamid.
It's a big mitzvah to always be happy.
(02:35):
But how can the Torah actually mandate our feelings?
How can it just force us to be happy?
What if I'm not feeling happy? You know, just an example that
comes to mind. There was once that I was ready
early for Shabbat, and I say once because it was.
The only time, yeah. In my entire life, that was
actually ready early for Shabbat.
(02:56):
I had cleaned the house, made all the food, called all my
family I needed to call, and I had a chance to sit down a few
minutes to learn a little. Bit.
And getting ready to leave, to go to Seoul.
And just before I leave, I'm going to take the soup out of
the oven. I had made this delicious.
It was like a basil zucchini soup.
(03:19):
Maybe I'll link the recipe in the discovery.
Please do, yeah. And I was all excited for it as
the first time I had made it. And so I take it out of the
fridge to just to put on the stove so I can get it hot before
Shabbat. And as I'm taking it out of the
fridge, no, the handle, no snapsoff the bottom.
And it went everywhere, everywhere.
(03:42):
I mean, it went on my shoes, my socks, my pants, my shirt.
It was in my hair, it was on theceiling, it was on the walls.
So Needless to say, I was very late to shawl.
Right. And honestly, by the time I got
to shawl, I was not in a good mood.
(04:04):
Of course not. You know, I don't know if
Judaism mandates you always be happy, right?
Certainly there are times to more and there's part of built
into our practice. It is morning.
But like, sometimes you're just not feeling it.
Sometimes you're just in a bad mood, not for any like deep
existential reason, but because things happen, right?
You spill some soup. And so there I am, right in
(04:27):
insult, trying to dive and trying to serve God out of
happiness, but I'm just not feeling it.
How? How am I supposed to channel
that? Right, right.
And it's funny when we think about the spiritual journey that
the year brings us, there are times, especially now as we're
approaching, right, Rosh Hashanah, the time when
everybody is judged. It's a time when we might even
(04:49):
think about not wanting to serveso much with joy, of wanting to
be introspective, reflective, right?
Even to feel a little bit of that sort of fear or or awe,
right? It's funny you say that because
to hillam #2 actually says Eve duet Hashem beira that you just
serve God with fear. I don't know which one is
playing off of the other. It's it's hard to tell
interesting, but certainly fearsor or awe is something that you
(05:11):
can serve God with any day of the year, right, right.
Happiness. How how is that something that
it can mandate and beyond just mandating happiness,
specifically happiness in service, right, The the idea of
Simcha and Avoda, happiness and service like Avoda, it's the
same word be used in modern Hebrew for for work, right?
(05:34):
Those seem to be things that should not go together very
easily. And when you look at the
commentators on how they explainthis line 1 after another after
another talks about how, yeah, you shouldn't serve God
begrudgingly like a servant who has no other choice, but you
should do it with happiness, right?
Sounds great. But practically, how do you do
that? How are you supposed to serve
(05:55):
God with happiness? Right, we think about sometimes
people say today the opposite oflove is in hated apathy, right?
And I even think about not just that sort of feeling of awe, not
just a feeling of begrudgingness, but also person
clocks into work every day. They don't expect to be happy
every time. They don't have to be unhappy
or, you know, hesitant or reticence to be there.
(06:16):
But at a certain point, the routine of work erodes some of
those feelings. How do we reapproach our avodah
with joy every time? How do we keep that spark alive?
I want to suggest possibly a radical or alternative way of
(06:40):
reading the Mizmar, my favorite.When we say Yves duet Tashem,
the Simchat serve God with happiness.
Perhaps what it means is not when you serve God, you should
do it with happiness, but actually the happiness itself is
the service. Well, beautiful.
(07:02):
With happiness, yeah, You shouldserve God with that happiness.
In other words, we think about serving God with mitzvot.
We think about serving God with sacrifices, Right.
What if we're Miz? Moore is suggesting that we can
actually serve God with that emotion of happiness.
To channel it into sort of that higher purpose.
(07:24):
Yeah, yeah. And if that's where you know, I
don't grant it's a little bit ofan alternative reading, but look
how the Miz more continues if wefollow that thread.
OK, right, EB do it Hashem Basimka right serve God right
with that happiness. The happiness is the service
right bow the fun of what do youcome before him with?
(07:44):
Do you come before him with sacrifices?
Do some before him with offerings.
We only have that language of coming before God with something
only once else in Tanakh. It's in Diva Yamim 1 chapter 16
verse 29 and there it talks about coming before God with a
minsa with an offering. But here, instead of an
offering, what do you come before him with?
(08:06):
Right, right. Joyous song, it says.
Exactly right. You bring song like the outward
expression of happiness, like look.
At verse 4 come. Before him with Thanksgiving.
Now, maybe this is talking aboutactual Thanksgiving offerings.
Maybe it's talking about the expression or even just the
feeling of Thanksgiving. Either way, you're coming to his
(08:27):
gates with this Thanksgiving, but his actual courtyard in the
gates, what do you come with? And again, we only see this One
South since enough too. It's actually just a few
chapters earlier into Hill in 96where it's talking about coming
before him with offerings here. What do you come to his
courtyards with? It's not offerings, but tila
tila praise. Wow.
(08:49):
Right, right. Wow.
So perhaps this home is more right it it, it is offering us
an alternative type of service when we're just those
expressions of happiness, both internally and externally are
itself the service that God is asking from us, right?
(09:11):
You're going to be thinking about the service in the temple
that as the sacrifices were offered, it was accompanied by
song, right? The the Levine, the Levites, one
of their main roles in the Benamine Dash was to sing the
songs. We watched a movie on Tisha
Bhavagadash Forban, right? The legend of destruction in it
recreates sort of the story. And one of the things that
really struck me is like the music is amazing.
Music is no, it's totally amazing.
(09:32):
Like we're listening to the wrong music today that we, they,
they had these sort of, you know, hits back then that were,
that were using these songs. And this may have been one of
them. Right in the to enough that I'm
looking at it says it's actuallyto accompany the the Corbanto
da, the Thanksgiving off, Yeah. It's what a lot of the
commentators say, right? I think about this then and I
think about what it was like to offer this then in your in your
(09:53):
reading, to offer a Qurban before Hashem, to bring before
Hashem something of material value up to bring life itself
before Hashem. But then to say for me as the
person offering that for me, as the person who brings us to you
out of thanks for what you've done for me in my life, right?
I say, don't get confused. This Qurban is not something
Ioffer in place of myself. I'm part of this too.
I bring a part of myself into this too.
(10:14):
And what do I have to bring for myself?
I'm not going to get on the altar, not going to sacrifice
me, but my inner world, right? My joy, my praise, my song.
Ioffer that to you also as part of this right?
I'm I'm part of this whole thing.
Wow, it's really beautiful and you know the prophets, they
criticize the sacrifices, mostlythe the sacrifices that are done
without Shuva, right? When you bring a chata when you
(10:36):
because you send, but you didn'taccompany that with repentance
and that's what they criticize. But what would be the
corresponding critique? Not for the sin offerings, but
for the Thanksgiving offerings? That you did it without
happiness, right? Right.
Exactly. Exactly.
And in fact, in the TOCA, the rebuke session in Deuteronomy
chapter 28, it talks about the oldest destruction and
(10:58):
punishments happening. Taka tesharloa varata desharna
kaha MI singha umi tuvleva. It's actually the only other
time in Tanakh that we have the the language of of Voda and
service and Simcha together. It says that all these things
happen because it didn't serve God with happiness.
Well, well, and I think about what that means for us today in
a world where Corbenote are not part of our day-to-day life,
(11:19):
right, We're not giving sacrifices in that way.
What did what did the the saferty Lima offer us?
What did they leave us with? They left us with working still
with that inner world, with thatworld of joy, with that emotion,
right, I'm going to be able to bring the animal that comes with
it. But this pathway still remains
open for me. So this is a really intriguing
(11:52):
idea, but it still leaves open that question, what is that
Simcha, that happiness that we're talking about?
And how is it that God can expect that and even mandate
that from us? No, I don't think there is
necessarily one type of happiness.
But what is the one we're talking about here?
(12:12):
And I'll tell you what I'm sitting with is that perhaps
it's the kind of happiness that Pircalvo talks about when it
talks about being Miss Emmaus Bachelko, right?
Happy with your portion, right? In other words, gratitude for
the fact that you believe that you have everything like God
(12:33):
wants you to have. Do you have everything that you
need? And that's where a person can
really start to find their joy because they stop looking at and
counting the things themselves, right?
We sometimes measure richness inquantity, but we can shift, We
can start to measure it a littlebit in quality.
They bring their experience intoit more, and that's a much
deeper richness that quantity can never really fill or attain
(12:54):
necessarily. And it certainly goes along with
the idea of a Thanksgiving off, right?
And saying I have enough. I have, I've even more than
enough. I can even give some back to
God. And I think when you think about
Simcha in the Torah, one of the main examples that comes to mind
and one of the main uses of it was when it talks about the
(13:14):
holidays. And it actually it's
interesting, if you look at them, it doesn't mention
happiness on Passover. On Shavuot, it mentions it one
time and then the Sukkot, it actually manages it twice.
And I think part of the reason is that if you're following the
agricultural season, right, Passover is at the beginning of
the harvest. Chevrolet, you've already
(13:35):
started to harvest the grain. And then by Sukkot you've
finally gathered in everything in the field.
And that was just progression offeeling more and more secure in
what you have, in what God has given you.
And by the time you get to Sukkot, you can say God has
given me what I need. And whether it's a Goodyear or
whether it's a bad year, you know that you have what you
need. You know that you have enough to
(13:56):
be happy. And you come before God and
Vahita Aksamaiah, you should be,you know, all the more so happy,
right? Well, I love that perspective of
cultivating, like I'm looking for reasons to give thanks,
right? Meaning the longer the harvest
goes on, the Torah assumes, the more reasons you'll have to be
joyous and and with that to be thankful, right?
It's sort of a respective you can bring into your own life.
(14:16):
I love that. You know, coming back to the
soup story, one of the things I,I realized after, like, a lot of
reflecting and like trying to channel some happiness there is
that maybe God didn't want me tohave soup.
And thank God we had lots of other food and nobody missed it
and we had everything that we needed.
No one left hungry. We had a great time that that
(14:38):
Friday night, Right. That's Simcha.
Yeah. This sort of spiritual way of,
of looking at things, right, of of being able to say things
like, well, maybe God just didn't want me to have the soup
that time, right? It opens me up all of a sudden
to gratitude because I recognizethere is some meaning to this.
There is some purpose to this, right?
(14:59):
It's not for nothing, It's for something.
And if I can connect to that something, then maybe even
though it wasn't packaged at all, the way I would package a
gift, maybe there was a gift latent dinner hidden on there.
Wow. In a way, the greatest gift that
we can give to God is to see thegift that He gave us.
(15:20):
Nice. You know, it reminds me of when
I bring my wife flowers and obviously I'm not bringing her
flowers because I'm expecting anything in return because I
want anything from her. But there is sort of one thing
that I am hoping for, one thing that will make it worth my time
(15:40):
and my effort and my money, right?
When I give her those flowers, Iwant to see her smile.
Totally right. That's all I'm asking for.
I don't need anything else in return.
And I want to see that smile. I think that's the way God feels
too, right? When He gives us all the gifts
that He gives us, right? He's not asking for much in
return, but He wants to see us smile.
(16:01):
He wants us to come before Him and to literally serve Him with
that smile. Not a smile while we're serving
him, but the smile itself is thesurface.
I also wanted to actually add inmy grandfather's own ideas about
(16:23):
happiness, and I'm sure that he's going to tell me that I'm
misquoting him, so I apologize ahead of time to him.
True, deep happiness, the ultimate happiness, is not just
recognizing what God gives to us, but recognizing what we're
(16:44):
giving to God, in other words, right?
Real happiness comes from knowing your mission, from
knowing what your avoda is absolutely, what your service
is, what your purpose is in the world.
When you can figure that out, right, and when you feel like
you can devote all of your energies toward that, that's the
(17:05):
greatest happiness of all. That is the deepest, truest
happiness that a person can experience.
Well, a great example of this isactually the only time in the
Torah where someone is describedas being happy.
And I know it's. Surprising, right?
Because it talks about happinessas a concept a lot.
But the only time that Torah actually describes a person as
(17:28):
actually being happy is when Godand Moshe are going back and
forth about how God wants him togo take the Jews out of Egypt.
And Moshe doesn't want to acceptthis mission.
And eventually he tells Moshe that Aaron, his brother, is
going to come meet him and he isgoing to be the mouthpiece for
him. What it says is he nehu yoseli
(17:48):
quetecha verasa vesamach bilibao.
And he tells Moshe, Aaron is coming out to greet you and he
is going to see you and he is going to be happy in his heart.
And the reason that's such a bigdeal is because what we would
have expected Aaron to feel whenhe just heard that his little
brother was going to lead the Jewish people, you would have
expected jealousy, right? But no, Aaron wasn't jealous,
(18:12):
and he was actually happy for Moshe.
This seems to have come out of some sort of security and
confidence in his own purpose inlife.
And what the Gamora actually says about this is because of
that happiness he expressed there that Aaron merited to be
the high priest, the Cohen Godal, the only actual example
(18:34):
of someone being happy in the Torah.
And it all has to do with knowing your purpose, knowing
your mission in life, being confident that God is setting
you on the path that you need tobe on.
I. Love that.
A great example of this that my,my grandfather likes to quote is
the the prayer on Shabbat of hisMass Moshe, right?
It's Ismat Moshe by Matnan Shalkao.
(18:54):
Moshe rejoiced in the gift of his portion.
He even met a man Karatella, because he was called a faithful
servant, right? And Moshe didn't have a lot in
life physically. And the one physical thing he
wanted to go into the land of Israel, he didn't get to have,
but he did have a mission. He did have a purpose.
He had probably a clearer divinemandated purpose and mission
(19:16):
than anyone who's ever lived. And that was the source of his
happiness. Right.
Why is that sort of this culmination for Moshe or on our
personal level, right? Why when I bring gift to
somebody, am I waiting for that gratitude?
Am I right when we do these things for other people, these
acts of service, and they give us that gratitude.
Part of that gratitude is not just this made me feel this
(19:37):
thing, right? It's also the recognition that
you as the giver, as the gift giver, have in you the capacity
to know me, right? To understand who I am, to know
what I want and that you're motivated by good.
You gave this to me out of a good desire.
There's something fundamentally good about you and giving to me,
right? The the cycle sort of Mushfiyama
Kabel give and receive is constantly shifting in the act
(20:00):
of gift giving. I give you something, but then
your gratitude gives me something, right?
And it it opens up something in me.
It shows me that I'm I'm seen assomebody who you know who.
You trust and makes. You feel good.
The gift makes the receiver feelgood, and then it also makes the
giver feel good. And you know, when we're
thinking about our purpose, right, our mission in life, it's
(20:22):
not such a simple thing, right? It is, unfortunately.
Not. Probably the hardest thing that
any of us have to figure out in life is like what?
What's our mission? What's our purpose?
Right? But we're not without any
guidance at all. But we, we do have the Torah and
the mitzvot to guide us in maybenot our specific purpose, but at
(20:43):
least our kind of general purpose as Jews and as human
beings. And rehearsed actually in his
commentary on this, Miss Moore says exactly this.
He says that, right, true happiness comes from a life
dedicated to Tora and mitzvah, alife dedicated towards Avodah
service. And at the time we're going to
(21:03):
release this, it's right before the High Holidays.
That's what the High Holidays are about, right?
Their time of introspection and trying to figure out who we're
meant to be, right? And it's not supposed to be
easy. No, right?
Not alone. But when we do figure out who
we're meant to be, the more, at least I should say, that we
figure out who we're meant to be, right, the more opportunity
there is for true happiness. And it's interesting, thinking
(21:27):
about Sukkots not just as the culmination of the agricultural
season, right, but the culmination of the high
holidays, of that process of introspection and of working on
ourselves and figuring out who we are.
Then we can come in to Sukkot with a real sense of Simsa.
Right, right, right. It's funny, You were talking
about Ravi Nachman before. I think about it.
Ravi Nachman, like you were saying for him, the system of
(21:50):
the Torah and its votes, all these acts, that's the floor.
It's not the ceiling. Sometimes we start to think,
well, I could just keep this, I could just add this part to my
life, then I'd really be doing for me.
Not when it's different, becausewhen a person goes on that
general path, eventually they'llstart to find their own path.
And that's what's laid out in the Tanak really, how different
characters, how different versespsalms, all of that pave a path
(22:12):
where individuals showed this ishow I figured out who I was,
what my mission is in life. And this is one of the lines,
right? This this line, where does it
say that right? This is one of the places
exactly this, this parrot of TLM.
If you do it, the shambles in cloud, we're not going to say
that is what takes a person fromI'm doing what everybody else is
(22:33):
doing to my happiness. My joy becomes part of it,
right? I'm finding my unique path and
my unique mission. Therefore, in the whole thing,
that's a piece of our self that we bring in Thanksgiving and
joy. I I love that idea of not just
bringing the sacrifices, but bringing ourselves with the
sacrifices when we think about even do it to Chamba Simcha,
(22:55):
when we talk about like, jeez, that sounds horrible.
Maybe that's the point. Maybe, maybe service is supposed
to be service. It's supposed to be work, right,
right. You come before God and it's,
it's like real work that you have to do to try to find that
happiness, to try to figure out who you are, to try to select
and understand how God has givenyou everything that you need,
(23:16):
right? That's why it's called work.
Absolutely. And like all the, the service
that we do for God, like if it, if it was so easy, it would not
be worth anything. Coming back to that, the story
with the soup, you know, God doesn't take your happiness for
granted, right? It is something that that you
have to work on. And perhaps part of that work is
(23:38):
the work to recognize that indeed, God has given us what we
need, right? That we actually didn't need the
soup, that we were actually finewithout it, right.
And part of it's also that work to recognize that we actually
have a service and a purpose. And I'm just thinking about this
as I'm saying yet, but I don't know.
I did a lot of introspection during Dopening.
(24:00):
And by the time I came to the Shabbat table sand soup, I
actually learned a really powerful lesson about like kind
of just like trusting in God andand understanding that we have
what we need and that it really it all comes from him.
And I was able to share some really what I felt like were
really meaningful thoughts at the table.
(24:23):
How much more meaningful and powerful was that service then
the soup could ever have been? I want to bring us home with one
final thought. The Torah in Numbers chapter 10,
verse 10 talks about the different days in which the
(24:43):
trumpets are sounded in the Temple.
And it talks about the holidays and Rosh Kodesh, the new month.
And it also talks about Yom Semakhtham, the day of your
happiness. Of course.
What days were those, right? I didn't see any happy day on
the calendar, right? Which day is the day of
happiness? And so the Midrash halacha, the
(25:04):
Sifre, gives two different answers.
The first answer is maybe that is Shabbat right?
Makes sense. It's a pretty happy day.
It's a great time for acknowledging our purpose and
what God created us for. Right know that He created us.
But the second opinion is that the Yom smacked fam, the day of
(25:26):
happiness, is every single day. There is nothing stopping any
day from being a Yom smacked fam.
Any day can be a day of happiness and so on that I wish
you all a happy day. May that happiness itself be a
(25:48):
service to God, and we'll see you next time.
This Qurban is not something Ioffer in place of myself.
I'm part of this too. I bring a part of myself into
this too. And what do I have to bring for
myself? I'm not going to get on the
altar, not going to sacrifice me.
But my inner world, right? My joy, my praise, my song.
Ioffer that to you also as part of this, right?
I'm I'm part of this whole thing.
(00:40):
Welcome back to Tehillim Unveiled.
This is Ari Levison. With I'm Jeremy.
Hey. And we're going to talk about
Miz more Littoda Tehillim 100. Today's episode is sponsored in
honor of my grandfather's birthday by his children and
grandchildren. Happy birthday OPA.
Happy birthday OPA. Mismor la toda, the Psalm of
(01:03):
Thanksgiving. What a feel good Psalm, right?
Totally, totally. Not just for Thanksgiving.
For all year. Shoot.
We released it too early. Just kidding.
But is it such a feel good song?Let's quickly just read it.
It's a short mismor, just 5 verses long.
Mismorla Toda Harula Shim Cola Aritz a Psalm of Thanksgiving
(01:24):
kala to Hashem all of the earth,if do it Hashem besimgra Bo
lefanov dernana serve Hashem with gladness, come before him
with joyous song de U Ki Hashem Who elohim, who asanu veloan
asluamo vitson marito. Know that Hashem, He is God, He
made us, we are His, His people and the sheep of His pasture.
(01:47):
Bo sharab betoda chatsirotov bittila hodulo bar hushimo enter
his gates with Thanksgiving, Hiscourts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name, Kitova do neither
olamhastova adorvador munato, for Hashem is good.
His kindness endures forever, and from generation to
generation is His faithfulness. It's got this great line, you do
(02:11):
ET Hashem basimka serve God withhappiness.
But that's kind of a a tough idea.
I mean, especially, but the way we interpret it, right, the idea
that the Torah would mandate happiness.
I mean, if you think about Rabi Nakhlan takes this to the extent
of saying mitzvah godola Leo, this seems tamid.
It's a big mitzvah to always be happy.
(02:35):
But how can the Torah actually mandate our feelings?
How can it just force us to be happy?
What if I'm not feeling happy? You know, just an example that
comes to mind. There was once that I was ready
early for Shabbat, and I say once because it was.
The only time, yeah. In my entire life, that was
actually ready early for Shabbat.
(02:56):
I had cleaned the house, made all the food, called all my
family I needed to call, and I had a chance to sit down a few
minutes to learn a little. Bit.
And getting ready to leave, to go to Seoul.
And just before I leave, I'm going to take the soup out of
the oven. I had made this delicious.
It was like a basil zucchini soup.
(03:19):
Maybe I'll link the recipe in the discovery.
Please do, yeah. And I was all excited for it as
the first time I had made it. And so I take it out of the
fridge to just to put on the stove so I can get it hot before
Shabbat. And as I'm taking it out of the
fridge, no, the handle, no snapsoff the bottom.
And it went everywhere, everywhere.
(03:42):
I mean, it went on my shoes, my socks, my pants, my shirt.
It was in my hair, it was on theceiling, it was on the walls.
So Needless to say, I was very late to shawl.
Right. And honestly, by the time I got
to shawl, I was not in a good mood.
(04:04):
Of course not. You know, I don't know if
Judaism mandates you always be happy, right?
Certainly there are times to more and there's part of built
into our practice. It is morning.
But like, sometimes you're just not feeling it.
Sometimes you're just in a bad mood, not for any like deep
existential reason, but because things happen, right?
You spill some soup. And so there I am, right in
(04:27):
insult, trying to dive and trying to serve God out of
happiness, but I'm just not feeling it.
How? How am I supposed to channel
that? Right, right.
And it's funny when we think about the spiritual journey that
the year brings us, there are times, especially now as we're
approaching, right, Rosh Hashanah, the time when
everybody is judged. It's a time when we might even
(04:49):
think about not wanting to serveso much with joy, of wanting to
be introspective, reflective, right?
Even to feel a little bit of that sort of fear or or awe,
right? It's funny you say that because
to hillam #2 actually says Eve duet Hashem beira that you just
serve God with fear. I don't know which one is
playing off of the other. It's it's hard to tell
interesting, but certainly fearsor or awe is something that you
(05:11):
can serve God with any day of the year, right, right.
Happiness. How how is that something that
it can mandate and beyond just mandating happiness,
specifically happiness in service, right, The the idea of
Simcha and Avoda, happiness and service like Avoda, it's the
same word be used in modern Hebrew for for work, right?
(05:34):
Those seem to be things that should not go together very
easily. And when you look at the
commentators on how they explainthis line 1 after another after
another talks about how, yeah, you shouldn't serve God
begrudgingly like a servant who has no other choice, but you
should do it with happiness, right?
Sounds great. But practically, how do you do
that? How are you supposed to serve
(05:55):
God with happiness? Right, we think about sometimes
people say today the opposite oflove is in hated apathy, right?
And I even think about not just that sort of feeling of awe, not
just a feeling of begrudgingness, but also person
clocks into work every day. They don't expect to be happy
every time. They don't have to be unhappy
or, you know, hesitant or reticence to be there.
(06:16):
But at a certain point, the routine of work erodes some of
those feelings. How do we reapproach our avodah
with joy every time? How do we keep that spark alive?
I want to suggest possibly a radical or alternative way of
(06:40):
reading the Mizmar, my favorite.When we say Yves duet Tashem,
the Simchat serve God with happiness.
Perhaps what it means is not when you serve God, you should
do it with happiness, but actually the happiness itself is
the service. Well, beautiful.
(07:02):
With happiness, yeah, You shouldserve God with that happiness.
In other words, we think about serving God with mitzvot.
We think about serving God with sacrifices, Right.
What if we're Miz? Moore is suggesting that we can
actually serve God with that emotion of happiness.
To channel it into sort of that higher purpose.
(07:24):
Yeah, yeah. And if that's where you know, I
don't grant it's a little bit ofan alternative reading, but look
how the Miz more continues if wefollow that thread.
OK, right, EB do it Hashem Basimka right serve God right
with that happiness. The happiness is the service
right bow the fun of what do youcome before him with?
(07:44):
Do you come before him with sacrifices?
Do some before him with offerings.
We only have that language of coming before God with something
only once else in Tanakh. It's in Diva Yamim 1 chapter 16
verse 29 and there it talks about coming before God with a
minsa with an offering. But here, instead of an
offering, what do you come before him with?
(08:06):
Right, right. Joyous song, it says.
Exactly right. You bring song like the outward
expression of happiness, like look.
At verse 4 come. Before him with Thanksgiving.
Now, maybe this is talking aboutactual Thanksgiving offerings.
Maybe it's talking about the expression or even just the
feeling of Thanksgiving. Either way, you're coming to his
(08:27):
gates with this Thanksgiving, but his actual courtyard in the
gates, what do you come with? And again, we only see this One
South since enough too. It's actually just a few
chapters earlier into Hill in 96where it's talking about coming
before him with offerings here. What do you come to his
courtyards with? It's not offerings, but tila
tila praise. Wow.
(08:49):
Right, right. Wow.
So perhaps this home is more right it it, it is offering us
an alternative type of service when we're just those
expressions of happiness, both internally and externally are
itself the service that God is asking from us, right?
(09:11):
You're going to be thinking about the service in the temple
that as the sacrifices were offered, it was accompanied by
song, right? The the Levine, the Levites, one
of their main roles in the Benamine Dash was to sing the
songs. We watched a movie on Tisha
Bhavagadash Forban, right? The legend of destruction in it
recreates sort of the story. And one of the things that
really struck me is like the music is amazing.
Music is no, it's totally amazing.
(09:32):
Like we're listening to the wrong music today that we, they,
they had these sort of, you know, hits back then that were,
that were using these songs. And this may have been one of
them. Right in the to enough that I'm
looking at it says it's actuallyto accompany the the Corbanto
da, the Thanksgiving off, Yeah. It's what a lot of the
commentators say, right? I think about this then and I
think about what it was like to offer this then in your in your
(09:53):
reading, to offer a Qurban before Hashem, to bring before
Hashem something of material value up to bring life itself
before Hashem. But then to say for me as the
person offering that for me, as the person who brings us to you
out of thanks for what you've done for me in my life, right?
I say, don't get confused. This Qurban is not something
Ioffer in place of myself. I'm part of this too.
I bring a part of myself into this too.
(10:14):
And what do I have to bring for myself?
I'm not going to get on the altar, not going to sacrifice
me, but my inner world, right? My joy, my praise, my song.
Ioffer that to you also as part of this right?
I'm I'm part of this whole thing.
Wow, it's really beautiful and you know the prophets, they
criticize the sacrifices, mostlythe the sacrifices that are done
without Shuva, right? When you bring a chata when you
(10:36):
because you send, but you didn'taccompany that with repentance
and that's what they criticize. But what would be the
corresponding critique? Not for the sin offerings, but
for the Thanksgiving offerings? That you did it without
happiness, right? Right.
Exactly. Exactly.
And in fact, in the TOCA, the rebuke session in Deuteronomy
chapter 28, it talks about the oldest destruction and
(10:58):
punishments happening. Taka tesharloa varata desharna
kaha MI singha umi tuvleva. It's actually the only other
time in Tanakh that we have the the language of of Voda and
service and Simcha together. It says that all these things
happen because it didn't serve God with happiness.
Well, well, and I think about what that means for us today in
a world where Corbenote are not part of our day-to-day life,
(11:19):
right, We're not giving sacrifices in that way.
What did what did the the saferty Lima offer us?
What did they leave us with? They left us with working still
with that inner world, with thatworld of joy, with that emotion,
right, I'm going to be able to bring the animal that comes with
it. But this pathway still remains
open for me. So this is a really intriguing
(11:52):
idea, but it still leaves open that question, what is that
Simcha, that happiness that we're talking about?
And how is it that God can expect that and even mandate
that from us? No, I don't think there is
necessarily one type of happiness.
But what is the one we're talking about here?
(12:12):
And I'll tell you what I'm sitting with is that perhaps
it's the kind of happiness that Pircalvo talks about when it
talks about being Miss Emmaus Bachelko, right?
Happy with your portion, right? In other words, gratitude for
the fact that you believe that you have everything like God
(12:33):
wants you to have. Do you have everything that you
need? And that's where a person can
really start to find their joy because they stop looking at and
counting the things themselves, right?
We sometimes measure richness inquantity, but we can shift, We
can start to measure it a littlebit in quality.
They bring their experience intoit more, and that's a much
deeper richness that quantity can never really fill or attain
(12:54):
necessarily. And it certainly goes along with
the idea of a Thanksgiving off, right?
And saying I have enough. I have, I've even more than
enough. I can even give some back to
God. And I think when you think about
Simcha in the Torah, one of the main examples that comes to mind
and one of the main uses of it was when it talks about the
(13:14):
holidays. And it actually it's
interesting, if you look at them, it doesn't mention
happiness on Passover. On Shavuot, it mentions it one
time and then the Sukkot, it actually manages it twice.
And I think part of the reason is that if you're following the
agricultural season, right, Passover is at the beginning of
the harvest. Chevrolet, you've already
(13:35):
started to harvest the grain. And then by Sukkot you've
finally gathered in everything in the field.
And that was just progression offeeling more and more secure in
what you have, in what God has given you.
And by the time you get to Sukkot, you can say God has
given me what I need. And whether it's a Goodyear or
whether it's a bad year, you know that you have what you
need. You know that you have enough to
(13:56):
be happy. And you come before God and
Vahita Aksamaiah, you should be,you know, all the more so happy,
right? Well, I love that perspective of
cultivating, like I'm looking for reasons to give thanks,
right? Meaning the longer the harvest
goes on, the Torah assumes, the more reasons you'll have to be
joyous and and with that to be thankful, right?
It's sort of a respective you can bring into your own life.
(14:16):
I love that. You know, coming back to the
soup story, one of the things I,I realized after, like, a lot of
reflecting and like trying to channel some happiness there is
that maybe God didn't want me tohave soup.
And thank God we had lots of other food and nobody missed it
and we had everything that we needed.
No one left hungry. We had a great time that that
(14:38):
Friday night, Right. That's Simcha.
Yeah. This sort of spiritual way of,
of looking at things, right, of of being able to say things
like, well, maybe God just didn't want me to have the soup
that time, right? It opens me up all of a sudden
to gratitude because I recognizethere is some meaning to this.
There is some purpose to this, right?
(14:59):
It's not for nothing, It's for something.
And if I can connect to that something, then maybe even
though it wasn't packaged at all, the way I would package a
gift, maybe there was a gift latent dinner hidden on there.
Wow. In a way, the greatest gift that
we can give to God is to see thegift that He gave us.
(15:20):
Nice. You know, it reminds me of when
I bring my wife flowers and obviously I'm not bringing her
flowers because I'm expecting anything in return because I
want anything from her. But there is sort of one thing
that I am hoping for, one thing that will make it worth my time
(15:40):
and my effort and my money, right?
When I give her those flowers, Iwant to see her smile.
Totally right. That's all I'm asking for.
I don't need anything else in return.
And I want to see that smile. I think that's the way God feels
too, right? When He gives us all the gifts
that He gives us, right? He's not asking for much in
return, but He wants to see us smile.
(16:01):
He wants us to come before Him and to literally serve Him with
that smile. Not a smile while we're serving
him, but the smile itself is thesurface.
I also wanted to actually add inmy grandfather's own ideas about
(16:23):
happiness, and I'm sure that he's going to tell me that I'm
misquoting him, so I apologize ahead of time to him.
True, deep happiness, the ultimate happiness, is not just
recognizing what God gives to us, but recognizing what we're
(16:44):
giving to God, in other words, right?
Real happiness comes from knowing your mission, from
knowing what your avoda is absolutely, what your service
is, what your purpose is in the world.
When you can figure that out, right, and when you feel like
you can devote all of your energies toward that, that's the
(17:05):
greatest happiness of all. That is the deepest, truest
happiness that a person can experience.
Well, a great example of this isactually the only time in the
Torah where someone is describedas being happy.
And I know it's. Surprising, right?
Because it talks about happinessas a concept a lot.
But the only time that Torah actually describes a person as
(17:28):
actually being happy is when Godand Moshe are going back and
forth about how God wants him togo take the Jews out of Egypt.
And Moshe doesn't want to acceptthis mission.
And eventually he tells Moshe that Aaron, his brother, is
going to come meet him and he isgoing to be the mouthpiece for
him. What it says is he nehu yoseli
(17:48):
quetecha verasa vesamach bilibao.
And he tells Moshe, Aaron is coming out to greet you and he
is going to see you and he is going to be happy in his heart.
And the reason that's such a bigdeal is because what we would
have expected Aaron to feel whenhe just heard that his little
brother was going to lead the Jewish people, you would have
expected jealousy, right? But no, Aaron wasn't jealous,
(18:12):
and he was actually happy for Moshe.
This seems to have come out of some sort of security and
confidence in his own purpose inlife.
And what the Gamora actually says about this is because of
that happiness he expressed there that Aaron merited to be
the high priest, the Cohen Godal, the only actual example
(18:34):
of someone being happy in the Torah.
And it all has to do with knowing your purpose, knowing
your mission in life, being confident that God is setting
you on the path that you need tobe on.
I. Love that.
A great example of this that my,my grandfather likes to quote is
the the prayer on Shabbat of hisMass Moshe, right?
It's Ismat Moshe by Matnan Shalkao.
(18:54):
Moshe rejoiced in the gift of his portion.
He even met a man Karatella, because he was called a faithful
servant, right? And Moshe didn't have a lot in
life physically. And the one physical thing he
wanted to go into the land of Israel, he didn't get to have,
but he did have a mission. He did have a purpose.
He had probably a clearer divinemandated purpose and mission
(19:16):
than anyone who's ever lived. And that was the source of his
happiness. Right.
Why is that sort of this culmination for Moshe or on our
personal level, right? Why when I bring gift to
somebody, am I waiting for that gratitude?
Am I right when we do these things for other people, these
acts of service, and they give us that gratitude.
Part of that gratitude is not just this made me feel this
(19:37):
thing, right? It's also the recognition that
you as the giver, as the gift giver, have in you the capacity
to know me, right? To understand who I am, to know
what I want and that you're motivated by good.
You gave this to me out of a good desire.
There's something fundamentally good about you and giving to me,
right? The the cycle sort of Mushfiyama
Kabel give and receive is constantly shifting in the act
(20:00):
of gift giving. I give you something, but then
your gratitude gives me something, right?
And it it opens up something in me.
It shows me that I'm I'm seen assomebody who you know who.
You trust and makes. You feel good.
The gift makes the receiver feelgood, and then it also makes the
giver feel good. And you know, when we're
thinking about our purpose, right, our mission in life, it's
(20:22):
not such a simple thing, right? It is, unfortunately.
Not. Probably the hardest thing that
any of us have to figure out in life is like what?
What's our mission? What's our purpose?
Right? But we're not without any
guidance at all. But we, we do have the Torah and
the mitzvot to guide us in maybenot our specific purpose, but at
(20:43):
least our kind of general purpose as Jews and as human
beings. And rehearsed actually in his
commentary on this, Miss Moore says exactly this.
He says that, right, true happiness comes from a life
dedicated to Tora and mitzvah, alife dedicated towards Avodah
service. And at the time we're going to
(21:03):
release this, it's right before the High Holidays.
That's what the High Holidays are about, right?
Their time of introspection and trying to figure out who we're
meant to be, right? And it's not supposed to be
easy. No, right?
Not alone. But when we do figure out who
we're meant to be, the more, at least I should say, that we
figure out who we're meant to be, right, the more opportunity
there is for true happiness. And it's interesting, thinking
(21:27):
about Sukkots not just as the culmination of the agricultural
season, right, but the culmination of the high
holidays, of that process of introspection and of working on
ourselves and figuring out who we are.
Then we can come in to Sukkot with a real sense of Simsa.
Right, right, right. It's funny, You were talking
about Ravi Nachman before. I think about it.
Ravi Nachman, like you were saying for him, the system of
(21:50):
the Torah and its votes, all these acts, that's the floor.
It's not the ceiling. Sometimes we start to think,
well, I could just keep this, I could just add this part to my
life, then I'd really be doing for me.
Not when it's different, becausewhen a person goes on that
general path, eventually they'llstart to find their own path.
And that's what's laid out in the Tanak really, how different
characters, how different versespsalms, all of that pave a path
(22:12):
where individuals showed this ishow I figured out who I was,
what my mission is in life. And this is one of the lines,
right? This this line, where does it
say that right? This is one of the places
exactly this, this parrot of TLM.
If you do it, the shambles in cloud, we're not going to say
that is what takes a person fromI'm doing what everybody else is
(22:33):
doing to my happiness. My joy becomes part of it,
right? I'm finding my unique path and
my unique mission. Therefore, in the whole thing,
that's a piece of our self that we bring in Thanksgiving and
joy. I I love that idea of not just
bringing the sacrifices, but bringing ourselves with the
sacrifices when we think about even do it to Chamba Simcha,
(22:55):
when we talk about like, jeez, that sounds horrible.
Maybe that's the point. Maybe, maybe service is supposed
to be service. It's supposed to be work, right,
right. You come before God and it's,
it's like real work that you have to do to try to find that
happiness, to try to figure out who you are, to try to select
and understand how God has givenyou everything that you need,
(23:16):
right? That's why it's called work.
Absolutely. And like all the, the service
that we do for God, like if it, if it was so easy, it would not
be worth anything. Coming back to that, the story
with the soup, you know, God doesn't take your happiness for
granted, right? It is something that that you
have to work on. And perhaps part of that work is
(23:38):
the work to recognize that indeed, God has given us what we
need, right? That we actually didn't need the
soup, that we were actually finewithout it, right.
And part of it's also that work to recognize that we actually
have a service and a purpose. And I'm just thinking about this
as I'm saying yet, but I don't know.
I did a lot of introspection during Dopening.
(24:00):
And by the time I came to the Shabbat table sand soup, I
actually learned a really powerful lesson about like kind
of just like trusting in God andand understanding that we have
what we need and that it really it all comes from him.
And I was able to share some really what I felt like were
really meaningful thoughts at the table.
(24:23):
How much more meaningful and powerful was that service then
the soup could ever have been? I want to bring us home with one
final thought. The Torah in Numbers chapter 10,
verse 10 talks about the different days in which the
(24:43):
trumpets are sounded in the Temple.
And it talks about the holidays and Rosh Kodesh, the new month.
And it also talks about Yom Semakhtham, the day of your
happiness. Of course.
What days were those, right? I didn't see any happy day on
the calendar, right? Which day is the day of
happiness? And so the Midrash halacha, the
(25:04):
Sifre, gives two different answers.
The first answer is maybe that is Shabbat right?
Makes sense. It's a pretty happy day.
It's a great time for acknowledging our purpose and
what God created us for. Right know that He created us.
But the second opinion is that the Yom smacked fam, the day of
(25:26):
happiness, is every single day. There is nothing stopping any
day from being a Yom smacked fam.
Any day can be a day of happiness and so on that I wish
you all a happy day. May that happiness itself be a
(25:48):
service to God, and we'll see you next time.
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