Q&A: A Great Commandment to Always Be Joyful!!!!!!
A Great Commandment to Always Be Joyful!!!!!!
Question
I heard a tune from the Na Nachs, some kind of song like that (apparently the source is from Rabbi Nachman). Is it true that there is such a commandment? And if so, where is its source in the Torah?
I thought maybe there is some support for it from the fact that the Shulchan Arukh rules that in the month of Adar one must increase joy, so that implies that throughout the rest of the year too there is a commandment to be joyful. Does that sound right?
Answer
The wording is confused. I assume you mean to ask whether there is a halakhic commandment to be joyful. The answer is: no. And the inference from the Shulchan Arukh is unfounded (and of course even if it were correct, a source would still be needed). There is a commandment to increase joy beyond the ordinary level of joy a person is usually in. There is no necessity at all to conclude that there is a commandment to be joyful.
Objections from songs, and certainly from Na Nach songs, are not really a way to learn Torah.
Discussion on Answer
I always thought he meant that since there is an obligation to rejoice on the festivals (a positive commandment that is counted among the 613), but during the rest of the year there is no obligation, still there is a commandment, like many positive commandments that have an obligatory core and an optional, fulfillable envelope. And maybe he inferred it from “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with gladness of heart, from an abundance of all things,” which admittedly is not the simple plain meaning, but is interpreted somewhere as referring to joy in the service of God. Though even then it still wouldn’t be talking about joy in general.
My teacher, the great gaon Rabbi Avraham Gurvitz (rosh yeshiva of Gateshead, England), gave a musar talk a few years ago when he heard some yeshiva student (-Hasidic) singing a tune with the words “It is a commandment to always be joyful” — that it is not correct because it leads to frivolity, etc.
Maimonides is talking about joy in performing a commandment.
As for frivolity, there are plenty of jokes about the Lithuanian yeshiva-world attitude toward frivolity. This is one of them.
What about
“Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with gladness of heart, from an abundance of all things.”
See above
What about Maimonides, Laws of Sukkah and Lulav: “The joy with which a person rejoices in performing the commandment and in the love of God Who commanded them is a great service. And anyone who holds himself back from this joy deserves punishment, as it is said: ‘Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with gladness of heart.’”
Doesn’t that show that there is a halakhic obligation to rejoice?