What really is joy?

This past week's Torah portion, Ki Tavoh, famously states that the Jewish people, in their infinite suffering, can look to but one thing as the reason - they failed to worship God joyfully. The curses abound; fathers shall eat their children, something we know happened in the horrible destruction wrought in the Second Temple period, elegies bemoaning the "merciful mothers who ate their children's flesh." My grandfather of blessed memory, Moshe Barth Z"L, told me that though he had never seen people eat human flesh in the Holocaust he had heard then that that was what was happening. Searing curses that struck at the heart of the human experience are recorded as such in the Torah reading, national decay, fleeing en masse from our enemies, food dissolving before our very eyes, bread not feeding its owners, people waking and begging for the advent of night, and closing their eyes waiting for morning. "I went to sleep," my grandfather told me, "praying I would not wake up the next morning. I woke up praying I would make it to nightfall so I could die in my sleep." He would live almost 85 more years, 79 of those years being joyous years after the war, but in many respects the question is all the more salient: How can a lack of joy bring about such curses? "Because you would not serve your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything (Deuteronomy 28:47)."

It would seem that this verse, that follows on the heel of the curses, amounts to a distillation of the individual and collective Jewish experience portrayed in the two other times the word joy is mentioned in Parshat Ki Tavo. 

First, after a person brings his first fruits he comes to the Temple and shares over the Jewish narrative from the time of Lavan to Egyptian exile and redemption and the ability to have a homestead in the Land of Israel and sanctify the abundance by bringing his first fruits to the Cohen and attesting to the joy he hopes to share with his family, the Levite and the converts among him. Thus, we see here the embryonic stages of sanctification and giving - first, you look out for your family, then those who don't have land or property, who are strangers or don't have the same bounty as you. 

Then, thereafter, the Torah portion teaches that when the Jewish people entered the Land, they received the Torah a second time, its text written on huge plastered stones, on Mount Gerizim and Ebal. After the binding receipt of the Torah, its blessings and curses, offerings were brought to Hashem, and peace offerings were brought, to create greater joy, the experience being one that surmounts the individual and being collectively experienced to unify the people in their conquest and settlement of the land.

Joy thus stems from completion, coming full circle. In the words of the Talmud, "There is no greater joy than resolving one's doubts," in other words, feeling complete in one's state.

May we all introspect and seek completion as people, understanding our obligations, and responsibilities and the extent to which the entirety of our nation hinges on our ability to step up to the plate and see how we can create greater unity and less divisiveness amongst our ranks.