Dear Friends,
Like many Jewish holidays, Sukkot carries more than one name. It is not only the “Festival of Booths” but also the “Festival of the Harvest.” Fall arrives, the crops are gathered, and farmers complete their work in the fields. It is time to return home, prepare for winter, begin the next agricultural cycle, and enjoy the fruits of the past year’s labor. Sukkot invites us to pause and to live fully in the present. If Rosh Hashanah directed our attention to the past, and Yom Kippur urged us to look toward the future, then Sukkot calls us to focus on the moment of being, on the here and now.
The Torah doesn’t simply tell us to mark this season; it also commands us to experience a specific feeling: joy. “And you shall have nothing but joy.” On Sukkot, the regrets of the past and the worries for the future are suspended in favor of happiness in the present. But this raises a question: how can one be commanded to feel an emotion? While that question has been discussed for centuries, I want to focus on something different: the degree of happiness we can actually experience.
In recent years, the field of “happiness economics” has studied the relationship between satisfaction and wealth. We often assume that more leads to greater happiness. Yet the Easterlin Paradox, named for economist Richard Easterlin, shows that while happiness rises with income up to a certain point, over time the connection between income and happiness fades. The reason is social comparison: once our basic needs are met, we tend to measure ourselves against others. And no matter how much we have, there is always someone who seems to have more.
So where, then, do we find true contentment? How much does a farmer need to harvest in order to feel the joy the Torah prescribes? Maimonides offers us a timeless reminder: joy is not simply what we feel for ourselves. He writes, “While eating and drinking, one must feed the stranger, the orphan, the widow, and other poor unfortunates. Anyone who locks the doors of his courtyard and eats and drinks only with his wife and children, without giving to the poor and the desperate, does not observe a religious celebration but indulges in the celebration of his stomach.” For Maimonides, joy is inseparable from generosity.
This year at the JCC, we are centering our professional development on the value of joy, one of our five core values. We will reflect on how we embody joy internally and how we share it with others. My hope is that we succeed not only in cultivating joy within ourselves but also in spreading it widely throughout our community.
One wonderful opportunity to do just that is our Fourth Annual Community Fall Festival on Sunday, October 12, 2025, from 11am-3pm here at the Kaiserman JCC. This free celebration of the season will feature vendors, activities, and fun for the whole family. Wristbands and tickets will be available for purchase to enjoy many of the attractions, and pre-registration is strongly encouraged for a smooth check-in. We look forward to welcoming everyone to celebrate the harvest season together in joy!
Wishing you a Chag Sukkot Sameach, a truly joyful Sukkot.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Moriah SimonHazani
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