Rejoice in All the Good

“And you shall rejoice in all the good that Hashem, your Lord, has given you.” A Quiet Question Many young people carry a question with them. They do not always say it out loud. A man sits down to his Sabbath meal. The house is full, the table is set, and the children are happy. Then, for one moment, a thought passes through his mind: “I’m enjoying this too much. What does all this good mean? Is it all right?” He feels a vague sense of guilt, as if enjoyment itself were a spiritual flaw. As if, to be a holy person, you have to suffer a little. Where does this idea come from? And how much truth is in it? What the Torah Really Asks The Torah gives a clear command: “And you shall rejoice in all the good that Hashem, your Lord, has given you.” It does not say “and you shall suffer,” and it does not say “and you shall weep.” It says “and you shall rejoice.” Hashem gave you good things, and He wants you to be happy with them. It goes even further. The Jerusalem Talmud, at the end of the tractate Kiddushin, says: “A person will one day have to give an account for everything his eyes saw that he did not eat.” Notice what it says. A person will be asked about what he refused to eat, not about something he ate by mistake or without meaning it for the sake of Heaven. He will be asked about the good that Hashem set in front of him, which he pushed away. So the line the Torah asks us to draw is not between pleasure and suffering. It is between what is permitted and what is forbidden. What Hashem has permitted, eat it, rejoice, enjoy it. What Hashem has forbidden, stay away from it and guard yourself. You do not write that list, and neither do your feelings. Hashem writes it, through His Torah. So a person who invents extra self-denial that the Torah never asked of him, and assumes he is earning spiritual points, is making a basic mistake. The Talmud says this about a person who takes a vow to give up wine: “If this person, who denied himself only wine, is called a sinner, then how much more so is one who denies himself everything.” The Real Sin Now we come to the sharpest point of all. Imagine a man enjoying the gifts Hashem gave him: the good meal, the beautiful home, his success in business. Here is the question. When does this enjoyment become a problem? It is not when he enjoys it. It is when he forgets who gave it to him. That is the heart of the matter. The sin is not enjoying the gift. The sin is forgetting the Giver. The Talmud says that a person who enjoys the good things of this world without first saying a blessing has done something “as if he misused something holy.” He did not eat anything forbidden. He enjoyed it without acknowledging the One who gave it. That is ingratitude in its deepest sense. The opposite is also ingratitude. Suppose Hashem opened the gates of blessing for you, and you shut them with your own hands, saying, “No, I’m better off without this.” That is not humility. It is arrogance. You think you know better than Hashem what is right for you. Serving Hashem Through the Material World This is exactly what the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, brought down into the world. Before him, the widespread path was harsh self-denial: afflicting the body, fasting, and pulling away from life. Many saw this as the main way to holiness. The Baal Shem Tov taught a different way: serving Hashem through the material world itself. Do not run away from the world. Lift it up. Eat, and say a blessing. Enjoy, and remember the Giver. Live inside life, and connect every detail of it back to its root in Hashem. As the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains, the permitted things of the material world belong to a “middle zone,” a kind of shell that still holds a glow of light inside it. Inside it there is a spark. That spark can be lifted up, or, Heaven forbid, dragged down. The way to lift it up is not to reject it. The way is to receive it while staying connected to its Source. Eating for the sake of Heaven, and joy that comes with gratitude, are the very work of refining and lifting up the world. That work is the reason the soul came down into this world. In Closing So the next time you sit down to your Sabbath meal and that moment comes, the one that asks, “Am I really allowed to enjoy this so much?”, know this: yes. You are allowed. More than that, this is what Hashem wants. Enjoy the meal. Enjoy your home. Enjoy your family, your success, your good day. Just do not forget who gave you all of it. The greatest pleasure of all is closeness to the One who gives the gift. That closeness grows stronger precisely through enjoying His gifts, when you enjoy them with thanks and with recognition of where they came from. “And you shall rejoice in all the good.” Not in spite of the good, but within it.