All the festivals are occasions of simchah. But only Succos is known as zman simchaseinu — the time of our rejoicing. Sounds good. Yet attaining that state of simchah may be even harder than the intensive self-scrutiny required during the Days of Repentance.

In the non-Jewish world there is an extensive literature on the “blues” that strike precisely around the holidays that are supposed to be happiest times of their year. Some are brought low by the suspicion that everybody but them is having a wonderful time. Others are reminded of their solitude during so-called family holidays.

I suspect that something of the same phenomenon also exists among some religious Jews during Succos: They feel none of the simchah that they repeatedly proclaim in their davening to be intrinsic to the Chag and the failure to do so only makes them feel worse.

That simchah was not always so elusive. When the Clouds of Glory returned after the Cheit Ha’Eigel on 15 Tishrei Bnei Yisrael experienced the joy of knowing that Hashem had forgiven them and was reestablishing His relationship with them. Later when all Jews dwelled in the Land and earned their livelihood directly from the earth the harvest season was intrinsically a time of rejoicing of taking satisfaction in the fruits of the long months of intensive physical labor preceding the harvest. But few of us still till the land or have ever experienced the joy that comes from hard physical labor.

Simchah is not a state of being that one enters automatically. Rather it requires intensive spiritual effort on our part. In distinguishing the ten terms for happiness in lashon hakodesh the Vilna Gaon identifies simchah with the sense of wellbeing that comes from an awareness of a relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Like all relationships that with HaKadosh Baruch Hu requires effort to build.

On Rosh HaShanah we were called upon to imagine a world in which Hashem’s Will reigns supreme and all false powers have disappeared. And in preparation for Yom Kippur we took stock of the patterns of our lives in order to understand all the obstacles we have set up hindering us from aligning our will with Hashem’s. Only after we have resolved to uproot those barriers can we aspire to the closeness with Hashem that is Succos.

The dancing of Simchas Torah brings home the point that the quality of our relationship with Hashem and thus the degree of our simchah is dependent on our efforts. Those dancing most joyously are invariably also the biggest talmidei chachamim i.e. those who have invested the greatest efforts in uncovering the Torah’s secrets. They need no stimulants other than the Torah itself to experience the joy of the day; it is the outgrowth of their own hard work.

Precisely because the qualities necessary to sustain any meaningful relationship are so antithetical to the prevailing zeitgeist do we find it so hard to sustain our relationship with Hashem. Every deep lasting relationship depends on the trust between the partners that each will forgo immediate desires for the sake of building the relationship. But we live in a world of instant gratification in which we are constantly told that it is a fool’s choice to resist the allure of immediate pleasure. We want it all — sustaining deep relationships and instant gratification. The two however are mutually exclusive; they cannot go together.

That is the lesson of the succah. We leave our secure dwelling and enter into an impermanent one as an expression of our emunah (trust) in Hashem. In renouncing our dependence on physical surroundings of our own making we lessen our ties to the physical material world and all the desires that go with it. That bitul hayesh (in Rabbi Dessler’s terminology) is the key to sustaining our relationship with Hashem as well as every other important relationship in our lives and brings in its wake the simchah for which we yearn. Without the former the latter is impossible.

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It would be a pity if Mishpacha readers were to assume that Family First is only read by women. For one thing the health and psychological issues dealt with in its pages are frequently no less relevant to men than to women. And some of the articles are among the most important published in Mishpacha.

For what it’s worth I would place the August 25 interview (Family First #205) with Miriam Kosman who has been working in campus kiruv in Israel for close to twenty years as among the most honest and important articles I have read in a long time. For starters I was delighted with her rejection of a too oft-quoted (because too oft-needed) aphorism “Don’t judge Judaism by the Jews.”

That aphorism is often quoted in the name of another friend Rabbi Berel Wein. I would agree with Rabbi Wein that while the Torah is perfect Jews are not. The Torah is rather forthright about both the inevitability of failure and our specific shortcomings. In addition I would agree that the most off-putting behavior of those who define themselves as Torah Jews is usually a product of a certain social conditioning rather than any serious confrontation with Torah texts (though that raises its own set of questions).

But the question that we wish to encourage every nonobservant Jew to ask is: “How would a life built around a relationship with Hashem differ from the one I’m currently living?” And the most relevant evidence in answer to that question will inevitably be the lives and conduct of those who profess to have such relationship. Torah will be judged by us and we should act accordingly.

Mrs. Kosman’s most important insight however concerns the attitude towards nonreligious Jews that underlies successful kiruv. If we convey the attitude “You have no knowledge no thoughts worthy of the name and no values and only act the way you do because you have never been exposed to Torah while I know everything worth knowing by virtue of having learned Torah ” we will never gain a hearing. If any further confirmation of that proposition were needed just consider how successful Democrats have been dismissing all criticisms of ObamaCare or the $787 billion stimulus as explicable only by the ingrained racism or subreptilian intelligence of the critics.

Mrs. Kosman’s approach is to legitimate every question or challenge on the grounds that a true relationship with Hashem must involve every aspect of a person including his or her understanding. “The minute you give a person legitimacy to think what he thinks” Mrs. Kosman observes “he doesn’t have to fight anymore and he can really listen.”

Mrs. Kosman makes clear that one need not have all the answers in order to have a profound influence on non-frum Jewish students. The beauty of a Torah life and Torah society will commend itself to many. But it was also refreshing to hear her admit candidly that most of us lack the requisite background to answer the most penetrating questions likely to be put to us by students and provide some examples of such questions.

Her final important point is that not having immediate answers should not be a cause for panic but an occasion for growth. Through our efforts to formulate answers and show students what role their values would play in a world run by HaKadosh Baruch Hu we too will grow in our understanding and appreciation of Torah. I for one am eagerly looking forward to reading some examples of how she does this even if they are published in the “women’s section.”

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The heterodox movements have long argued that the failure of Israel’s Orthodox “monopoly” is proven by the fact that most Israelis define themselves as “secular” and that importing American-style heterodoxy will cure the alienation from religion of Israeli Jews. The latest Central Bureau of Statistics survey of Israeli Jews over age twenty leaves that argument riddled with holes.

First the survey shows that the premise is wrong. Only 42 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as “secular.” Another 25 percent define themselves as “traditional but not very religious.” Interestingly 21 percent of Israelis say they have become more religious over time while only 14 percent have become less so.

Even among Israeli Jews who define themselves as “secular” the level of religious observance is far higher than among unaffiliated American Jews who comprise the largest segment of American Jewry; and also much higher than among Reform Jews and by many measures higher than among the rapidly dwindling number of Conservative Jews. Among secular Israeli Jews 82 percent conduct a Pesach Seder; two-thirds light Chanukah candles; 29 percent light Shabbos candles; 26 percent fast on Yom Kippur; and 17 percent build a succah. Furthermore 10 percent keep kosher year around and 22 percent do so during Pesach.

When the next-least observant group — the “traditional but not very religious” — is added to the calculation the disparity between the two most secular groups of Israel Jews and non-Orthodox American Jews becomes even sharper. One-third of the former keep kosher year around and nearly half during Pesach. Over 10 percent do not travel by car on Shabbos.

American-style heterodoxy then would be a step backwards not forwards for Israel’s most secular Jews.

Case closed.

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“Lebanon gives Palestinians new work rights” reads the August 17 New York Times headline. As the Times makes clear whatever rights Palestinians in Lebanon (most of whom have lived their entire lives there) gained they are pretty minimal. They will still not be allowed to work in any of the learned professions. They will still be confined to twelve stinking refugee camps lacking even basic sanitation infrastructure. They will still be barred from owning real property in Lebanon.

Until Times readers learned that Palestinians had been granted the same rights to work in Lebanon as other foreign workers who even knew anything about the conditions under which they endure in Lebanon or that they are legally barred from becoming citizens even if they were born in Lebanon and have lived there all their lives?

The world media is full of discussion of Israeli apartheid even though Arabs constitute almost 20 percent of Israel’s citizens and Arab citizens suffer from no legal disabilities. The “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza for which Israel is blamed is endless grist for the media mill. But who knew that the Lebanese government has been keeping its 400 000 Palestinians in far worse conditions than anyone is suffering in Gaza?

Mudar Zahran a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian descent points out in the August 1 Jerusalem Post that the world’s obsession with Israel has done incalculable harm to Palestinians in Arab countries whose plight has been totally ignored. Thus Nabih Berri — whose Amal Shi’ite militia enforced a multiyear siege on Palestinian refugee camps in which people were reduced to eating dogs and rats — is today the speaker of the Lebanese parliament. He travels frequently to Europe without fear of prosecution on human rights charges where he finds a ready audience for his lectures on Israel’s “crimes against the Palestinian people.”

Zahran writes that even the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian women and children in Sabra and Shatila by Lebanese Christian and Shi’ite militiamen would have been ignored if not for the opportunity to bash Israel whose soldiers had nothing to do with the killing.

In short the suffering of Palestinians only counts if it can be used as a club against Israel. Otherwise it’s not worthy of anyone’s attention.