Happiness is a Choice
This week’s Dvar Torah on Parashat Ki Tavo was written by Rabbi Yizchak Zweig for the Shabbat Shalom Fax and delivered at CAJE’s opening meeting of the Jewish Early Childhood Director’s Network by Sharon Zweig, ECE Director for Yeshiva Elementary School. It has been edited for space.
Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash
We dedicate this Dvar Torah to Larry Jay (z”l), husband of our CAJE Board member Dr. Susan Jay.
May his memory be a blessing.
This week I came across something called the World Happiness Report, which ranks the overall sense of population happiness in 143 countries…
Here are their top five countries as ranked by happiness for 2024: 1) Finland 2) Denmark 3) Iceland 4) Sweden and (drumroll please…) 5) Israel!
The rest of the top ten are rounded out by 6) Netherlands 7) Norway 8) Luxembourg 9) Australia and 10) Switzerland.
Aside from the overwhelming domination of Northern European countries, I was more than a little surprised to see that Israel ranked so highly.
Here is what they had to say about Israel; “Israel has displayed emotional resilience in the wake of the October 7th attack.” Remarkably, Israel claimed the world’s second spot in terms of happiness for its younger population (for overall happiness of the older people they ranked 18th).
For those of you who are wondering, the United States ranked 23rd overall, tumbling eight spots from its 2023 ranking of 15th.
Looking at Israel’s particularly high ranking…informs us that happiness is a personal choice – and that one can choose to be happy, even under difficult and trying circumstances…
Of course, this week’s Torah portion delivers an important lesson in perspective and how we can achieve happiness.
“All these curses will come upon you and overtake you [...] because you did not serve Hashem, your God, with happiness and a good heart, even though you had an abundance of everything” (Deuteronomy 28:45-47).
This week's Torah reading contains explicit details of both the rewards for following the Almighty’s word and the calamitous repercussions for going against it…
The Torah makes a remarkable statement – why did all these horrible things befall the Jewish people? “Because you did not serve your God, with ‘simcha – joy’ even though you had an abundance of everything.”
This is actually quite astounding!
Nowhere in the Torah are we commanded to serve God with joy. Likewise, there is no positive commandment to be happy.
So, what exactly is this failure – of not serving with joy – that it would lead to such horrific consequences?
The key to understanding this is the last part of the verse – “even though you had an abundance of everything.”
It is part of the human condition to focus on the problems we are having, and this sometimes obscures that which is good in our lives…
In addition, we also have an innate motivation not to internalize all the good in our lives because it means we owe something to someone…
This is also why most people give a very lukewarm response when asked how they are doing. You will very seldom hear someone answer “GREAT!” or “never better!”
Being happy comes with responsibilities that many of us don’t want to own up to.
First, if we internalize how lucky we are then it leaves us with very few excuses for not achieving and growing…
Second, if we are happy and satisfied with life, then we need to be filled with appreciation – and this equates to a debt of gratitude towards whomever helped us; a parent, spouse, teacher, mentor, kind stranger, or any combination thereof.
We seldom focus on everything that is amazing in our lives and we usually only appreciate things once they are gone…
The key for avoidance of pain is for us to stay focused on all that is positive in our lives and to be appreciative.
In this way we will “own up” to being happy and the responsibilities that come with that, and mindfully enjoy all the wonderful gifts in our lives.
Therefore, we must make the decision to choose happiness for ourselves.
If the general Israeli population can somehow manage to do this given all the almost inconceivable difficulties in their lives, then we too can focus on the abundance that the Almighty has bestowed on us and live happier and more fulfilled lives.
As educators of young children this is an extremely important message to internalize for ourselves and to transfer to our impressionable students as they grow and develop their attitudes toward everything around them.
By modeling thankfulness and helping our students see “the abundance of everything” given to us, we will enable our children to develop a foundation for a strong sense of appreciation and happiness for years to come.
Shabbat Shalom
