The role of happiness

                An interesting thought question that tends to elicit a diversity of replies is whether happiness is a means or an end? Is it our goal to be happy, or is happiness a valuable tool that we need in order to accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish? No one can deny that there is an inherent connection between energy and happiness. When happy, we walk with a pep in our step and we view the alarm clock as a concerned friend who ensures we make it on time to the first thing on our schedule.  When down, life is a drag and we view our alarm clock is an obnoxious noisemaker cheerfully disturbing our peaceful sleep and forcing us to face a day we’d rather not.   

 However, this week’s Torah portion presents a third option- happiness as a barometer to genuine meaning.

          Happiness appears twice this week, once after the mitzvah to bring first fruit to the temple and declare our appreciation for it and once after a litany of scathing consequences for not fulfilling our potential as a nation. It says that one of the main issues was that we ‘didn’t serve G-d with joy’. [1] Two questions- why is it that happiness is an integral part of first fruit, and more generally, why is being happy an integral part of Jewish living more broadly?

                The answer is that happiness is a sign that one is connected to a meaningful source.  When connected to higher meaning, trivialities of life bounce off easily as they are couched in a greater context and made small.  On the other hand, for a person who is struggling without a big picture,  a small pain can be a further sign of his misfortune; it can provide further evidence that life is conspiring against him.  This is why happiness is an integral ingredient within Judaism- it is a sign that the Judaism is also meaningful.  If a person just goes through the motions of his Judaism without deriving meaning from it, then most certainly, that will be expressed via lackluster joy.  This point was elucidated clearly by Victor Frankel in Man’s search for Meaning, ‘For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.’ Mitzvot and first fruit are meant to be vehicles with which we surrender to a cause greater than our self and happiness is the sign that tells us whether we have internally done that.  

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[1] 28:47