Simcha - The Joy of Presence, The Presence of Joy

Rabbi Alan Lew (1943-2009) This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared

[Dwelling in the Sukkah] is a commandment we fulfill not with a gesture or a word, but with our entire body. We sit in the sukkah with our entire body. Only our entire body is capable of knowing what it felt like to leave the burden of Egyptian oppression behind, to let go of it...Only the entire body can know what it felt like to be pushed from a place of dire constriction and into a wilderness, a spacious, open world. Only the body can know what it felt like to be born. Only the body can know the fullness of joy, and this is a commandment that can only be fulfilled with joy...

And when we speak of joy here, we are not speaking of fun. Joy is a deep release of the soul, and it includes death and pain. Joy is any feeling fully felt, any experience we give our whole being to. We are conditioned to choose pleasure and to reject pain, but the truth is, any moment of our life fully inhabited, any feeling fully felt, any immersion in the full depth of life, can be the source of deep joy.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) - The Pursuit of Joy (Ki Tavo 5775)

Simcha in the Torah is never about individuals. It is always about something we share...The festivals as described in Deuteronomy are days of joy, precisely because they are occasions of collective celebration: “you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the strangers, the fatherless and the widows living among you” (16:11). Simcha is joy shared. It is not something we experience in solitude.

Happiness is an attitude to life as a whole, while joy lives in the moment. As J. D. Salinger once said: “Happiness is a solid, joy is a liquid.” Happiness is something you pursue. But joy is not. It discovers you. It has to do with a sense of connection to other people or to God. It comes from a different realm than happiness. It is a social emotion. It is the exhilaration we feel when we merge with others. It is the redemption of solitude...

...We cannot know how, or if, we will be remembered. How then are we to find meaning in life?

Kohelet eventually finds it not in happiness but in joy – because joy lives not in thoughts of tomorrow, but in the grateful acceptance and celebration of today. We are here; we are alive; we are among others who share our sense of jubilation... And yes, we do not know what tomorrow may bring; and yes, we are surrounded by enemies; and yes, it was never the safe or easy option to be a Jew. But when we focus on the moment, allowing ourselves to dance, sing and give thanks, when we do things for their own sake not for any other reward, when we let go of our separateness and become a voice in the holy city’s choir, then there is joy.

Kierkegaard once wrote: “It takes moral courage to grieve; it takes religious courage to rejoice.” It is one of the most poignant facts about Judaism and the Jewish people that our history has been shot through with tragedy, yet Jews never lost the capacity to rejoice, to celebrate in the heart of darkness, to sing the Lord’s song even in a strange land. There are eastern faiths that promise peace of mind if we can train ourselves into habits of acceptance. Epicurus taught his disciples to avoid risks like marriage or a career in public life. Neither of these approaches is to be negated, yet Judaism is not a religion of acceptance, nor have Jews tended to seek the risk-free life. We can survive the failures and defeats if we never lose the capacity for joy. On Sukkot, we leave the security and comfort of our houses and live in a shack exposed to the wind, the cold and the rain. Yet we call it zeman simchatenu, our season of joy. That is no small part of what it is to be a Jew...

..The pursuit of happiness can lead, ultimately, to self-regard and indifference to the sufferings of others. It can lead to risk-averse behaviour and a failure to ‘dare greatly.’ Not so, joy. Joy connects us to others and to God. Joy is the ability to celebrate life as such, knowing that whatever tomorrow may bring, we are here today, under God’s heaven, in the universe He made, to which He has invited us as His guests.

Toward the end of his life, having been deaf for twenty years, Beethoven composed one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, his Ninth Symphony. Intuitively he sensed that this work needed the sound of human voices. It became the West’s first choral symphony. The words he set to music were Schiller’s Ode to Joy. I think of Judaism as an ode to joy. Like Beethoven, Jews have known suffering, isolation, hardship and rejection, yet they never lacked the religious courage to rejoice. A people that can know insecurity and still feel joy is one that can never be defeated, for its spirit can never be broken nor its hope destroyed.

The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”

Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Thich Nhat Hanh on Happiness

Many people think excitement is happiness…. But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.”

“Without suffering, there’s no happiness. So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.”

How many Hebrew words are there for Joy? Rabbi Getzel Davis

Simchah - The generic word for joy. In particular it describes a joy that is continual, not related to passing experiences. It’s opposite is melancholy.

Sasson - Joy that comes from action, effort, or pain. It is often associated with circumcision and Moshiach Ben Yosef. It's a fast-burning candle of joy. Sasson’s antonym is aveilut (mourning), or sighing, both outward expressions of loss.

Gilah - The joy of revealing (hitgalut) something new. Often associated with revelation, Moshiach Ben David, the birth of a child, harvest. The word wave (gal) might be related.

Rinah - The joy of bringing something from potential to actual. Gilah and Rinah are a pair that complete each other. While gilah is the joy of revelation, rinah is the joy of expressing this newness to others. It is often associated with song and prayer. The opposite of rinah is numbed silence.

Chedvah - The relief, joy, and enlivening experience of unification. It is a quiet, deep, and constant joy of inner connection and oneness. The opposite of chedvah is detachment and depersonalization.

Ditzah - Spontaneous ecstatic joy. It is related by some to the dancing and leaping at a wedding. Others relate it to how a fish briefly jumps out of the water and flies through the air. In these unplanned, irrational moment, separations, habituations fall away. This is also the joy of eating the scary leviathan in the Messianic era. Ditzah’s opposite is fear.

Tzohalah - Intentionally cultivated joy. Tzohalah is an onomatopoeia for the sound a horse makes when it whinnies. It is a joy that communicates something, often to project confidence.

Pitzcha - The joy of spontaneous cracking open. This joy, often accompanied by singing, often marks a new beginning.

Alisah / Alitzah - The joy of giving joy. This can sometimes be used in a sexual connotation. Some connect it with 'holy clowning'

Hara’ah - The awe-filled joy of being small in the face of the other. Biblical usage is usually associated with coronation. One can find this joy in monotony or newness, in success or defeat. The joy of service and doing our part.