Happy Edition!

Tomorrow we celebrate Hoshana Rabba, the culmination of Sukkot. The Torah commands us in Devarim to "rejoice in your festival" and to be ach sameach, "exclusively happy." Our tradition even calls this chag z'man simchateinu, the time of our joy.

The Torah obligates feelings more often than we might expect: fear God, love God, be happy. These commandments are hard to understand, let alone observe. How do you obey an order to feel something? Our sages answered by translating the feeling into actionable steps: new clothing, meat, and wine. For some of us, those suggestions still resonate more than a thousand years later.

Since October 7, being "exclusively happy" has been harder. Even the actionable steps have felt forced, possibly callous, on the anniversary of one of the saddest days in Jewish history and in the midst of ongoing war and suffering. Then, last year, joy arrived without needing to be intellectualized. A ceasefire took hold, and the hostages came home during Sukkot. We watched videos of crowds in Hostage Square and across Israel and Gaza, bouncing and dancing with joy. On Hoshana Rabba, we gathered with our students and sang Hallel for two reasons: to mark our ancient holiday with its song of praise, and to give voice to our immediate gratitude for the relief we had awaited for two long years. Joy came honestly.

This year, the euphoria has passed for me, and maybe you feel the same. It has been a hard year on so many fronts, and I find that I need those actionable baby steps again, one small step at a time in the direction of joy. Meat and wine probably won't cut it for most of us, but I do have another suggestion.

Last week on Yom Kippur, my rabbi, Rabbi Barry Dov Katz, shared a beautiful drasha about "brilliant things." He described the recent Broadway production of Every Brilliant Thing, in which a child begins a running list of life's small joys (ice cream, staying up past bedtime) to help his mother through severe depression. "Brilliant" here is meant in the British sense: wonderful, delightful, a little bit magical. Rabbi Katz then read the Yom Kippur Avodah service in this light, especially the poem Mareh Kohen, which lingers on how radiant the Kohen Gadol looked as he emerged from the Holy of Holies, describing him through one luminous image after another. That is the practice: you look for the magic detail by detail. You will miss some, but you keep looking, keep listing, and the list itself changes how you feel.

Rabbi Katz's words have stayed with me, and I have started keeping my own list. When you work with children, the brilliant things are endless: a child telling you about her day before she has learned where reality ends and fantasy begins; a preschooler explaining that the Jewish people got the Torah because "we buyed it on sale"; elementary school students cheering one another on as they braved a mini zip line; an 8th grader leading our community in Hallel.

This week, in honor of Sukkot, we invited our students to make a list of their own. We set out a very large dry-erase board asking them what makes them happiest, and they covered it with brilliant things like "my sister; ice cream; pizza and peace; books; field trips; puppies and basketball; a lulav and etrog."

As our Sukkot gift to you, we have put together a visual list of brilliant things: the smiling faces of our children. We hope their smiles make you stop and smile. We hope their joy ignites yours. And we hope that watching this video is one actionable step toward fulfilling the mitzvah of v'samachta b'chagecha, rejoicing in your festival.

Wishing everyone a "brilliant" Shabbat and chag.