Happiness Comes With Hardship - Rabbi Steven Burg

the concept of simcha and judaism is uh to me it's very complicated i know to most people it's not just go out and be happy but i see simple as almost being something very different simple is almost the absence of pain the absence of anger it's being able to accept who and what you are accepting the almighty's plans for us in the world and i i'll tell you what this really hit home for me someone once pointed out to me that uh avraham vino when avant went out to sacrifice his son yitzhak right they didn't know where the place was he was going for a few days and during that whole time he had to be ready to receive navua and part of the vua part of prophecy is you have to be basimka which meant that abram knew that he was going to sacrifice his son yitzchak and he had to be basimka for those few days in order to get a kalesparkho to tell him where he had to go to sacrifice his son how did someone keep simcha during that whole time and it's just this realization that things happen to us right things happen all the time things come out of the blue negative things happen to us and if a person really believes that god runs the world then he's showing him and when someone show him and they know that god loves them and they know that god's looking out for them then they always feel that love and that that's the true simcha that's the true simplest that even if bad things are happening simple sometimes you know i i've talked about this a lot in my own personal life in that my father passed away the first the second day of rosh hashanah and as i mentioned to many many of you the uh the first day of rosh hashanah he had a code very very badly and wasn't able to really be up on the pulpit uh for a long time and that first day russian he was up in the pulpit and i blew chauffeur and i said dad you don't have to you don't have to get up you know because it was hard for him to get up and down i'll come over to your chair you can call out the the techias and he said no no i'm fine he got up every single time and that last day he you know was just back to himself after 45 years of being a rub and a shul he was able to to finish his life in that beautiful way and then that that night he got sick and the next day he passed away now it's a funny thing because what is simcha i'll be honest with you i am basimka because i know that coach brooke who gave him that last day yes my heart's broken yes there is tragedy that i can't speak to him anymore yes there's so many things missing but basimka is knowing that for 45 years he gave his life to the jewish people the simplest knowing that khashoggi loved him enough to give him that last day but is enough to know that he has 18 grandkids carrying on that future simcha could be found even in the midst of tragedy and to me that's really what we always need to focus on just to walk around the smile even though things may not be that great i know hashem loves me and i know and that's the root of my symbol [Music]