How Can a Person Be Commanded to Be Happy?

How Can a Person Be Commanded to Be Happy?

Try telling a sad person, “Be happy.” Usually it will not help, and sometimes it will even make the person angry. Emotions are not an electrical switch. A person cannot decide that at eight-thirty worry will stop, at nine longing will begin, and at ten happiness will arrive. Yet specifically on Sukkot the Torah says something that sounds almost impossible: “You shall rejoice in your festival” (Deuteronomy 16:14). And not only that. At the end of the passage it adds: “You shall be altogether joyful” (Deuteronomy 16:15). How can one be commanded to do something that does not obey commands?

The question becomes sharper because the Torah does not describe joy as an accidental result of the festival. It commands it. In the passage concerning the festivals, the Torah also says of the four species: “You shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days” (Leviticus 23:40). Sukkot is even called in the liturgy “the season of our rejoicing.” If joy were only a mood that appears when conditions happen to work out, it would be difficult to understand the meaning of the commandment. One cannot command a person: “Feel this now.”

The sages offer a very practical answer. The Gemara teaches: “The Rabbis taught: A person is obligated to make his children and members of his household rejoice on the Festival,” and it then lists practical ways of bringing joy to one's family (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 109a). Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides, rules: “The seven days of Passover and the eight days of the Festival, together with the other Festivals, are all forbidden in eulogy and fasting, and a person is obligated to be joyful and of good heart during them, together with his children, his wife, the members of his household, and all who accompany him” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Festivals 6:17). Yet immediately afterward he does not tell the person simply to “feel.” He describes actions. Children are given things that make them happy, women are provided clothing and jewelry according to one's means, and people eat meat and drink wine as appropriate.

In other words, the Torah commands joy, and the sages translate part of that command into behavior that creates conditions in which joy can arise. A person does not directly control emotion, but does control part of the environment surrounding it: how the Festival table will look, whether time will be devoted to family, whether festive clothing will be worn, whether a dignified meal will be eaten, whether there will be singing, whether routine will be interrupted, and whether other people will be given a reason to rejoice.

Maimonides immediately adds something deeper: “And when he eats and drinks, he is obligated to feed the convert, the orphan, the widow, and other poor and unfortunate people.” One who locks the doors of the courtyard and eats and drinks with children and wife but gives nothing to the poor and embittered is not experiencing “the rejoicing of a mitzvah, but the rejoicing of his belly” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Festivals 6:18). The joy commanded by the Torah is therefore not merely a private feeling inside the mind. It is built through a system of actions: eating, clothing, family, giving, and including others.

This completely changes the way we think about emotions. We are accustomed to saying: when I feel like it, I will go for a walk. When I am in the mood, I will meet friends. When I feel close, I will invest in my marriage. When I feel like myself again, I will return to the lesson. But what if sometimes the order is reversed? What if we do not always need to wait for emotion to authorize the action, because sometimes the action is what opens the door to the emotion?

Psychology contains a central therapeutic principle known as behavioral activation. It was developed especially in the treatment of depression and does not tell a person to “think positively” or “force yourself to be happy.” The idea is that in certain states a person enters a cycle: low mood causes activity to contract, social contact to decrease, and meaningful activities to be abandoned. That reduction further decreases sources of reinforcement and satisfaction, and the emotional state may deepen. One way to interrupt the cycle is to begin with planned and valued activities even before motivation has fully returned.

This point matters. Action is not a counterfeit of emotion. A person in pain does not need to pretend to be happy. The Torah does not ask a person to erase pain, and the sages knew mourning, suffering, and times when there is no commandment to smile. Yet the fact that we cannot order the heart what to feel does not mean that we have no influence over it at all. There is a difference between controlling an emotion and creating conditions in which an emotion can emerge.

King David says: “Serve the Lord with joy; come before Him with song” (Psalms 100:2). Joy appears here within action: service, coming, song. Elsewhere he says: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalms 118:24). Not merely “we are happy,” but “let us rejoice and be glad,” language of entering into an action. Sometimes the emotion follows movement rather than preceding it.

We know this even without research. A person arrives at a wedding tired and without much enthusiasm, enters the circle of dancing, and after a few minutes something changes. A family begins singing around the Shabbat table when no one was especially excited at the beginning, and the singing itself changes the atmosphere. A person leaves home to meet a friend despite not feeling like going and comes back different. The earlier feeling was not false. It simply was not the final word.

But another mistake must be avoided. This does not mean that every sadness can be solved by going for a walk or singing. Significant mental-health conditions sometimes require professional treatment, and the commandment of joy must not become a reason to blame a person for failing to feel happy. The point is not that we are responsible for every emotion that arises within us, but that we are responsible for part of the environment and actions in which our emotions live.

This is especially relevant during festivals. People sometimes say, “This year I do not feel the holiday atmosphere.” Yet a holiday atmosphere is not always a guest who arrives by itself. A prepared table, dignified clothing, a decorated sukkah, inviting someone who would otherwise be alone, a song the family sings together, and time in which worries are set aside as far as possible are not merely expressions of joy that already exists. Sometimes they are the way joy is built.

The sages said: “The Divine Presence rests neither through sadness... but through the joy of a mitzvah” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 30b). Again, this does not erase human pain. It recognizes that there are actions and states that orient the mind. A human being is not completely passive before the emotional world.

Perhaps this is why Sukkot is specifically called “the season of our rejoicing.” Before the festival, the Torah does not ask whether this year unfolded exactly as we wanted. It does not promise that everyone who enters a sukkah arrives without worries. It gives a person seven days and commands the building of a space in which joy has a chance to appear: a meal, family, guests, mitzvah, song, giving, and a certain pause from the race.

Here perhaps lies the answer to the question of how joy can be commanded. The heart cannot be directly ordered to feel, but the person can be commanded not to leave the heart alone. Actions, people, and moments can be built around it that allow it to open.

We are accustomed to saying, “When I am happy, I will live differently.” Sukkot sometimes invites us to reverse the sentence: live for a few moments in a way that makes room for joy, and perhaps you will discover that the heart knows how to arrive at places that willpower alone could not bring it.