Does Judaism Want Us to Abstain from the Pleasure of Life?

Are you familiar with all you can eat restaurants? You pay at the entrance and can eat everything. To come out ahead, we fast all day, but the restaurant has a trick. As soon as you sit down, they load your [music] table with lots of bread, salads, and fries. We are starving, so we devour it. And then, when the really expensive dishes arrive, the steaks or the worthwhile desserts, we are already stuffed. We have no room left. Think about it for a moment. Our world is exactly like this restaurant. We are all chasing a feeling of pleasure, good food, shopping, likes, [music] vacations. These are the appetizers. They are available, they are fast, and they flood our brains with dopamine. But there are two problems with them. First of all, to feel that same high again, we need an ever-increasing dosage. >> [music] >> What used to excite us doesn't even tickle us anymore today. And the second problem, after every such high comes a crash, a sugar drop, emptiness. We are stuck in a loop. So what is the solution? Certain religions and worldviews will tell you to abstain. Don't enjoy the world, that way you won't get addicted. But Judaism says exactly the opposite. In Judaism, if you don't enjoy the world, you're missing the point. God created a world full of pleasures so that we would enjoy them. To such an extent that a Nazarite in Judaism, a person who decides to withdraw from the pleasures of life, must bring a sin offering at the end of the period for having denied himself the good of the world. But, and here comes the catch, in order to eat the bread without ruining our appetite for the main course, we need [music] boundaries, and that is exactly the role of Halakha. It is not there to stifle us, but to preserve our enjoyment. We eat, but with breaks between meat and dairy. We work and earn, but we stop everything on the Sabbath. These boundaries prevent us from burning out and becoming desensitized. They [music] preserve the taste of life. And yet, with all due respect to the pleasures of the body, they will always be temporary, because the body itself is temporary and limited. This is where the main course comes in, which the Ramchal, one of the greatest sages of Israel, talks about. The true pleasure, the one that doesn't disappear 2 hours after [music] we experience it, is the pleasure of the soul, the pleasure of something eternal. If you perform acts of kindness, overcome an urge, or connect with the creator, the pleasure from that will not be erased. It will remain with you even 20 years from now. Chasing after fleeting pleasures leaves us empty, but when we have a purpose, meaning, and a connection to the infinite, we stop chasing the moment and start living the eternal. >> [music]