Day 216
May 6 was Yom Hashoah, the day we remember the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
On that day, a Holocaust survivor passed away.
Esther Greizer left this world at the age of 95. She had no children as she was a subject of the diabolical experiments of Mengele in Auschwitz which rendered her sterile. After the war she married and moved to Israel. The family she married into embraced her and she had many nieces and nephews.
They say she had a happy life.
When she passed away in Haifa on Yom Hashoa the family was concerned there might not be many people at the funeral.
A post went up on social media and the opposite happened as thousands attended her funeral.
One of her nieces said she was so happy for her beloved Aunt.
On the same day, a group of students were on the March of the Living. It was a group of about 60, and they realized that about 30 of them were descendants of survivors of Auschwitz.
They took the opportunity to make a special blessing.
This is a blessing one can make when revisiting a place where one experienced a miracle. The blessing can also be made when an individual visits a place where their ancestor experienced a miracle.
So in Auschwitz, some 30 young women made the blessing that their ancestors experienced a miracle in this place.
The miracle of survival.
One of the young women expressed her happiness at the opportunity of making the blessing.
In both of those instances the word happiness was used.
I found that an interesting usage of happiness.
Is that really a good definition of happiness?
The Jewish people seem to live in the nexus of joy and sorrow.
Next week we will experience Yom HaZikaron, the day we remember the fallen in Israel which is immediately followed by Yom HaAztmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.
The sorrow immediately leads to happiness.
How can that be?
It turns out that according to the World Happiness Report, Israel ranks 5th in happiness. This statistic is still true in this past half year when there has been so much tragedy.
This ranking includes the young adults who are serving in the army and often paying the highest, most unimaginable price for that service.
So how is it there is so much happiness?

Investigation of the data finds a correlation between meaning and happiness.
According to Emily Smith in her book The Power of Meaning,
purpose, transcendence, social connection and a coherent story, all serve to create meaning and ultimately happiness.
Tal Ben Shachar, the Israeli Harvard professor who taught the most popular course in the curriculum, on happiness moved back to Israel because he wanted his family back in the embrace of his nation who have understood, from all the original Jewish wisdom, all about achieving happiness.
We, the people of the book, seemed to have gotten that chapter down!
So when the Chassidic Rabbi, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches that it’s a Mitzva to be happy it seems that we have the choice to be happy.
No matter what the circumstances we can tap into the meaning and purpose and we will find happiness.
This week’s Torah portion is called Kedoshim, holy ones.
It begins with the commandment to be holy.
So we need to be happy and it seems we can arrive there by being holy.
This portion has a very high number of Mitzot in the text, 51 in total.
That’s a lot for just one Torah portion.
But if we are commanded to be holy we need the instructions on how to.
But the commandments given are not what you might anticipate.
They are not about removing oneself from living in order to be holy.
Instead they are focused on interpersonal relationships, on seeing the other and recognizing the value on the other.
One of the most famous is
“Love thy neighbor as oneself”
How can we be commanded such an emotion?
What if our neighbor treats us badly? How do we love on command?
It is a choice to be made.
Our Sages teach us that first we must love ourselves and recognized our own unique talents and mission.
Once we understand that no one can do the job on this planet that we are to do, we will notice the unique Gdliness in others and respect their mission.
Rabbi Wolbe teaches that when we recognize our own worth, our soul, our Neshama, is working properly and can see the worth in others without diminishing self.
That ties right into loving the other.
Loving is in itself a spark of Gdliness, as we imitate Gd’s trait of giving.
In Hebrew love is Ahava, and the root of Ahava is “hav” which means to give.
So if you want to love someone, give to them.
And if you want to be happy, you will find purpose in that giving.
In these days we teeter between joy and despair.
Yet we are a nation known for persevering in the darkest of times, and finding happiness and meaning in those times.
On Yom Hashoah there is a siren that wails as we observe a moment in silence, remembering all those we lost.
This year, in one of the hospitals in Israel, someone took a video clip of the nurses and doctors during the siren. And at the same moment that the siren blared, the cries of a newborn baby were heard.
All present dissolved in tears.
Tears of Happiness.
Am Yisrael Chai!
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!