Somebody Built It
The Torah commands joy for a full week every fall. A Tuesday night at Camp Simcha showed me how that’s even possible.
This week, the Jewish calendar commands us to be joyful.
Not a suggestion. Not a hope. A command, with the same verb the Torah uses for paying what you owe and showing up on time. Sukkos is called zman simchateinu, the season of our joy, and for seven days there is an actual obligation to be happy.
For most of my life that struck me as strange. You can command a person to eat matzah. You can command him to sit in a hut. But a feeling? Try telling someone to be happy and watch how that goes.
Then I watched a Tuesday night at Camp Simcha, and I stopped wondering.
Camp Simcha is the camp Chai Lifeline runs for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Campfire night is the big night. Music, a dance circle, the whole camp on the field. And every session, there is one kid who does not want to be there. Doesn’t want the spotlight. Doesn’t want the crowd. He’s had enough of people looking at him for one year. He wants his bunk and his bed.
And every session, there is a counselor who knows him.
So here is what that Tuesday night actually takes. The music does not start in the middle of the field. It starts at the quiet end, near where that kid is sitting. The dance circle doesn’t form and then send someone to drag him into it. It forms around him. Nobody announces anything. Nobody says his name into a microphone. Nobody makes it a moment, because a moment is exactly what he’s afraid of.
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Twenty minutes later, that kid is up on somebody’s shoulders.
If he didn’t know better, he’d swear it just happened.
The music drifted his way, the circle got bigger, and somehow he was in it. Out of nowhere. It didn’t happen out of nowhere. Somebody built it. Somebody spent the entire afternoon building it: where the speakers go, who sits next to him at dinner, which counselor starts dancing first and in which direction. Every piece of that night was placed so that one boy could feel joy without ever being asked to perform it.
That’s how you command a feeling. You don’t command the feeling at all. You command the building. I think that’s what the Torah is doing with Sukkos.
It doesn’t say feel happy. It says: build a hut, sit in it, invite guests, eat together, sing, take the four species and wave them in every direction. It hands you a construction schedule, and the joy shows up to live in what you built. Most of the time you don’t even notice the building.
You just notice, twenty minutes in, that you’re on somebody’s shoulders.
Which brings me to the part of this that has nothing to do with camp. Joy is not a mood that arrives when life is good. Joy is a discipline. And the people who love you best are the ones quietly building it for you on the days you can’t build it for yourself. The friend who shows up with the coffee. The spouse who moves the speakers to the quiet end of the field without saying a word about it. The counselor who knows which kid needs the circle to come to him.
Tonight Sukkos gives way to Shmini Atzeres, and then Simchas Torah, the loudest, happiest dancing of the year. Somebody in your life won’t feel like dancing. They’ll be standing at the far end of the shul, wanting their bunk and their bed.
They need a campfire. Go build one with them. Don’t announce it. Don’t make it a moment. Just start the music at the quiet end and let the circle form.
Chai Lifeline runs Camp Simcha for children facing serious illness. You can learn more at chailifeline.org.
