Noam
Coming up on Wondering Jews…
Mijal
I have, like, a random question.
Noam
Sure.
Mijal
It’s like a personal question. Like, do you wonder if you’re happy?
Mijal
Welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam.
Noam
Today we’re going to be asking a question. What is it even mean to be happy? And before we get started, I want to thank the Bernstein Foundation for their generous support and partnership in our work. In memory of Leo M Bernstein.
Mijal
Leo M Bernstein was a Washington, D.C. real estate developer, investor, banker, and philanthropist. A man with a deep love of America, a devotion to democracy and democratic institutions, and a lifelong pride in his Jewish identity.
Noam
I feel so honored to be able to carry his memory forward through his work and just knowing the Bernstein family, just so incredibly grateful to them for their continued partnership and making sure that we could do all of this work. And I know this topic is really important. I know to like a lot of people there, specifically my friend Amy.
Noam
So like this topic is this is a this is a this is a tough topic. Let’s do it.
Mijal
It is. Right. It’s like on the one hand it’s like a not a silly but like a, you know, like, what does it mean to be happy? It sounds cliche, but on the other hand, it’s like an existential topic. And I’ll say, no, I’m like, it actually is a very timely moment for us to be discussing this.
Mijal
We didn’t plan it this way, but it fell out really well because this episode is coming out right before the holiday of Sukkot.
Mijal
In the US we celebrate it over eight days and we basically leave our homes behind. And we’re supposed to spend most of our time on this, temporary kind of homes. This both. And it’s a really interesting holiday, but I’ll just name one thing, which is that we are supposed to generally be happy in Jewish holidays, but the holiday of has an extra commandment in which we are told, you have to rejoice on this holiday with your family.
Mijal
You have to be together. So there’s something about this holiday which is really interesting. It comes in the heels of the High Holidays. It tells us to renounce some of our physical comforts, and it doubles down on happiness and joy. So it’s a good time of year to be asking this big existential question about what does it mean to be happy.
Noam
On top of that? Mijal, I just want to tell you an idea that I learned from my friend Judy Michelle, which I think is awesome. He explains why this holiday is the holiday of joy more than any other holiday. It’s such an interesting idea that I had never thought of. Every Jewish holiday there’s, like you said, there’s this idea to be happy and and if you’re if you don’t have the means, if you’re poor, you, the community figures out a way to get you your what you need.
Noam
Like on Passover, the Jewish community. Make sure that you have what you need on the holiday, and that’s part of it. You’re supposed to be doing that on all the holidays. But he said something that I was like, oh my gosh, I totally understand why is the holiday of Joy, which is that the concept of joy is to be able to enjoy something ready for this with integrity, to enjoy something with integrity.
Noam
And what that means is what is Sukkot? It’s the holiday that you’re gathering everything you’re gathering everything in. See if it’s called. You gather everything in. And one of the laws of one of the laws of gathering from the field. Is there something called p legit? And which is that part of the field? No matter what goes to the people who don’t have means, they don’t have things.
Noam
And so what Judah was saying is that the the food that you get on this holiday of the means to celebrate the holiday. It’s not that anyone’s giving it to you. It’s your right to have that very thing. In in the legal system itself, that the field aspects of the field back in the day belongs to you. So the concept of joy we can now understand it’s for is having the the well-being in order to have what you need for your family and doing so with full integrity, that it’s not through someone else giving it to you, but it’s through you having it yourself.
Noam
And that’s an idea of like joy. And so that I never thought of before.
Mijal
Beautiful. Are we using the word just to clarify? Are we using joy and happiness interchangeably? We could should we should we do it?
Noam
See, here’s the problem. There’s like so many words for joy and happiness in Hebrew. We could go back and forth and like Simha Rena, I don’t know all, all these different Hebrew words. And maybe I got some of them wrong already, but I think that the that people listening will be like, well, joy is different than happiness, which is different.
Noam
So I’m talking about the concept of Simha. I don’t have a great definition of that outside of joy, happiness. But maybe, maybe we’ll we’ll work that through it again.
Mijal
Yeah. And Rabbi sucks, by the way. He talks about the word simha, which I think we could use happiness and joy, but we really refer to Simha. So we’re gonna play with that. But he talks about it as in the in Biblical Hebrew, always used to describe experiences that are shared. So there’s something there that which we might interrogate together about.
Mijal
We’re going to get there. Now what you.
Noam
Say now you just my shirt. Like you, no one could ignore my shirt. Do you see?
Mijal
I can’t really read it from here. Could you? I, I can’t. It’s too okay. I can’t read.
Noam
It if my shirt says, hug it. It’s a Danish word that is about cozy contentment and enjoying well-being through the simple things in life. That is what it is. Hug it. We’ll get to that.
Mijal
That’s beautiful. It’s different than what I said. But it is beautiful.
Noam
We’ll see, we’ll see. Maybe we’ll.
Mijal
Get that. Well, you know, before we get to the I, I have, like, a random question. Sure. Do you ever like like it’s like a personal question. Like, do you wonder if you’re happy? Like, is this like a, like. Okay, maybe I’ll tell you why I’m asking the question. What do you think about how any of you want to answer?
Mijal
But I’ve been wondering if only unhappy people think about whether they’re happy. And if you don’t ask your I don’t know, whatever. Do you wonder if you’re happy?
Noam
A few thoughts on that. One is years ago, I had Dovid Bashevkin on one of our other podcasts back in the day. David Bashevkin is a friend of both of ours. He’s a he is somebody who is a podcaster, a great, great podcast called 1840. And he was on one of our podcast called The Power of at the time.
Noam
And our topic was happiness. And he was saying publicly that he felt, you know, an element of maybe he said depression. At the time, I don’t remember what it was. And he he said one of the reasons that he does explore these topics of happiness and joy, to your point, was because it’s something that he was struggling with at the time.
Noam
So it is a really excellent question. But what I will say from my own personal experience is, as someone who has gone through life having moments of not feeling happy, not feeling joy, it very much so allows me to be aware when I do feel joy and and Taliban. Shachar, who is somebody who’s written extensively about happiness, he really is a happiness guru.
Noam
He said that there are two paradoxes about happiness. Paradox number one is that the pursuit of happiness leads to a lack of happiness. And paradox number two is.
Mijal
Wait, can we can we pause and unpack that?
Noam
Okay.
Mijal
Say it again slowly and give me some examples.
Noam
He says that the pursuit of happiness. This is paradox number one. The pursuit of happiness leads to unhappiness. And what I think he means by that, or the way I internalize it, putting him aside for a second, the way I internalize it is trying to be happy. Try to go to a destination in order to be happy. Trying to go to Costa Rica, to go to Mexico, to go to an island, to go to mountains and climb the mountain in order to be happy is not the right way to be happy.
Noam
And that’s the paradox, the pursuit of it, trying, saying, I want to feel happy. I want to feel happy. My understanding is that it’s actually what I have over here, which is huge, which is the, the, the, the cozy contentment that we could actually experience. The, the holding a hot cup of coffee with my with my children and they’re holding hot chocolate together.
Noam
That is huge. That is the experience of it. Or taking a walk outside with your loved one if you have. If you’re lucky enough to have a loved one and taking that walk outside with them, that is huge. This being around a dinner table with with close family and friends and just engaging in conversation that is huge, or being in a screen free environment and just being present, that is huge.
Noam
And that is this concept of Simca. It’s not the pursuit of something, it’s just the willingness to be something.
Mijal
Okay, but let me let me then go back to this paradox of the pursuit of happiness tends to not lead to happiness or maybe lead to unhappiness. Is that because?
Mijal
It is that because most people are pursuing the wrong thing on the way to happiness, or because people are misunderstanding what happiness is? So what? What do I mean by this question? We the examples that you gave, right. You know, going on this trip and hoping it will make me happy, that would depend on an assumption that I would think, well, going to this trip will make me happy, and that’s what happiness looks like.
Mijal
And then the other examples that you gave for contentment, you know, like spending time with loved ones. I guess what I’m saying is that can also be pursued as a mode to happiness. So is the paradox that that really most humans misunderstand what it is that we have to pursue to be happy? The. Am I making sense now.
Noam
Or not? You’re making complete sense. So I think that that might be one thing. The other thing is the paradox is that let’s focus on the verb. Pursue the pursuing of happiness. That pursuit chasing after it will not lead to it. Another one of my friends has this idea. His name is. He has this. He loves saying the pursuit is happiness, meaning that if you try to pursue happiness, then you’ll never get there.
Noam
But if you live a life of pursuit, if you live a life of going, activating, engaging, producing that in and of itself is the joy. But if you’re trying to get something on the other side of it, you’re trying to instrumental lies in to speak a little philosophically and get somehow, like through chemistry, produce happiness, you’re not going to get there.
Noam
And, and one of the ways that it that’s why you have to a little bit trick your mind. If the happiest people are often and I don’t have a study to prove this right now are the people that give giving, giving, giving is is leads to so much more joy than taking, taking, taking. And that’s the that is again another paradox.
Noam
If you’re giving an order to take then then very likely we’re not going to feel joy. But if we’re giving in order to give the I could only use a term here Mela, the automatic natural thing that happens is joy. But if you’re if you’re giving in order to get joy, to get happiness, then that likely won’t work in the same way.
Noam
But if you’re just giving an order to give, that will provide an element of of well-being and joy.
Mijal
Interesting. Yeah. I think well, first of all, the study is the most, the most, the studies that have been most replicated when it comes to happiness really have to do with relationships. That’s saying that the more that you are embedded in a network of relationships and people that you can count on and they can count on you.
Mijal
So that might be like shorthand to what you were saying about giving, the more that you will self describe yourself as as happy. But I’ll just say something. I’m just I keep going back to the way that you, that you frame this paradox, which is that the more you pursue happiness, the more unhappy you would be.
Mijal
And I think, like Jewish wisdom and, you know, and biblical wisdom would probably I’m gonna like this, agree or sharpen it like I think that it would it would agree with that paradox when you misunderstand what happiness is. Right. But but so if you think happiness is about wealth or about, you know, the degree that you know, the prestige or things like that, then yes, you’re going to become unhappy as you’re pursuing it.
Mijal
But I do think that there is a form of pursuit of somehow, let’s say, in which you can double down on nourishing relationships, on, you know, on inviting people over to your table, on, on pursuing meaningful things and on recognizing that there is a like for me, it’s part of happiness, a higher power with like a plan for the world, you know, things like that.
Mijal
I think you could pursue it. And that could be, helpful, but perhaps it’s a little bit less about, like, a checklist and more about, like, frames of mind, like habits of of the heart and of the mind that you can develop in yourself that that allow you to kind of, achieve happiness and achieve some kind of like irrespective of, you know, of your circumstances.
Noam
I like that, and I think that that’s true if we don’t make it the goal. Maimonides says this great line about talking about the the joy, the Simha of Yom Tov of these holidays where he talks about, he says there’s something called Simha and just genuine Simha. Simha means the joy of your belly, meaning.
Mijal
That talks to you. And I’m just telling you, I’m sorry to say this. I feel like my mother is talking to you right there. I have a difference in that is not my problem. But you could talk a little bit more about it.
Noam
What he’s saying is that when we think of joy, of being something that just eating, eating, eating and being gluttonous, that’s not joy. He says the only way to achieve joy, and that’s a commandment on the holiday. The only way to achieve joy is through giving to others, which is really remarkable. He says that that’s genuine joy. Genuine joy is is doing that.
Noam
And if you think that joy is just eating, eating, eating, that’s not called joy. Simha. It’s called the joy of your belly. So,
Mijal
Yeah, just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply you were gluttonous. That’s not what I was saying, but but but we we have gone back and forth, and I do think that you appreciate a experience. You know, I’ll just. I’ll just say it like that. Okay. Cool. So that’s one paradox that I think is really provocative, just.
Mijal
And makes me wonder, like, when am I pursuing what I think is happiness in a way that ends up just being like, leaving me empty, you know, and just almost being counterproductive. What’s the second paradox you are referring to?
Noam
The second paradox that Top Shankar talks about is he says that you actually need unhappiness in order to achieve happiness.
Mijal
Okay, well, say that again slowly.
Noam
He says that you actually need to experience something that’s unhappy, need to feel unhappiness in order to achieve. Simha. In order to achieve happiness.
Mijal
Okay. Can you break it down for us?
Noam
The way I would break it down is that just like you need darkness to see light. And you need the weekdays. To experience Shabbat, you need something that is the opposite of that thing in order to experience the thing that you want to experience. So I when I feel the utmost joy, I’m just, you know, trying to think of something.
Noam
If I’ve experienced a setback in my life. Okay. What I want to what I know when I achieve success in my life, I, I feel it in a different sort of way than having never gone through setbacks that I’m telling you just from a personal experience that that’s that’s what I that’s very much so, the way I feel when I so, so like if I let’s say I got, let’s say let’s, let’s keep it like, let’s keep it, you know, authentic but not like overly authentic, overly vulnerable.
Noam
Let’s say I got cut from my basketball team in in 10th grade, which I did. I got cut from my varsity basketball team in 10th grade, and I only made it towards the end of the season. I was on the JV team. I could not believe I remember this and it’s crazy as a 40 year old speaking right now that that is that that was so much that I still remember this feeling of being cut, of having that setback, of being like, wait, I’m a ballplayer.
Noam
This is my identity is what I this is how could I be cut from the team? And I was cut, I was cut, and the joy of my success in later years in basketball, 12th grade was experienced so much more so, I believe, than I would have had having never gone through that setback. So like, there’s a line that that come back as greater than the setback that, that, that this idea that in order to really feel that joy or like to, you know, maybe this is being a, now, now I’m being a little bit more bid.
Noam
And if my wife tells me after we record this that I can’t say this, then it will take it out. But I when, when, when when when my wife had a miscarriage. Okay. So we went through something really difficult of, you know, months of being enthusiastic about having a child. And, you know, so many couples struggle with this.
Noam
But it happened to us twice, to my wife twice. And, you know, that degree of of I want to call it depression. The not knowing what to do is this the end of the story? Will we not not be able to have children? Is this what’s going to happen? And now the joy of and not everyone has this joy on the other side.
Noam
And I recognize that. But the joy that we have of are four beautiful, delicious children is, I don’t know that I needed that unhappiness to feel that happiness. I don’t ever I don’t want to say that. But I could tell you, knowing what it feels like to have the experience of this unhappiness that we went through, the the joy is just so unbridled.
Noam
When you have healthy children, it’s just like there’s I can’t describe it. I cannot describe it beyond that.
Mijal
Yeah. That’s, you don’t know. It’s making me wonder about a couple of things. What you’re sharing right now. One of them is whether this second paradox helps explain the astounding happiness levels from Israel that come out every year. Like, I think in 2026, just a few years after October 7th, with the whole world kind of demonizing Israel.
Mijal
Israelis are number eight in the scale of happiness in the world, which is just wild, wild, wild. And part of it might be what you’re kind of pointing to that when you face deep and happiness, it makes you appreciate, you know, the blessings of your life more so when you face war and challenges, it might make you appreciate things.
Mijal
To a greater extent. I’m just wondering if this is part of of the story. The other thing that what you’re sharing is making me, consider is with this second paradox that you have to feel unhappiness to, to, to be happy. I wonder if there’s something here just about resisting the kind of like numbness that is much more comfortable, that protects you.
Mijal
So there’s this, Jewish psychologist, called Erich Fromm, who’s written a bunch of really interesting books. I don’t know what ears he lived or died. No, I’m not you. I don’t have your brain. Sorry, but, But but he wrote some, like, really intriguing, amazing books. And one of them is called the Art of loving, which I.
Mijal
I’ve often gone back to. And he’s got this paragraph there where he talks about love, which I know is not happiness, but I’m going to relate it in a second. And he basically says, like to love and be loved in this world, you’re going to have to take huge risks, that you’re going to have to be hurt, and you cannot experience love if you’re not willing to to really care for somebody else.
Mijal
And when you’re caring in that way, you are vulnerable. You are like you are deeply vulnerable. Things can go wrong. You will be hurt, right? Like this, this, this will hurt. But if you’re not willing to open yourself to that, you will never be able to experience love in all of its majesty. And I think there’s something there that that is similar with happiness, right?
Mijal
That if we walk around Nam or refusing to experience difficult things, refusing to love and be loved, to to care about people in a way that can make us deeply, deeply, deeply unhappy, then we would never have made us have enough and real enough to also experience the heights of happiness.
Noam
Absolutely. I mean, I think that that is just fundamentally true. I do I think it’s fundamentally true. And there’s this idea also about appreciation that I love, that I think kind of comes from that, which is another thing that said, which is that his favorite English word is appreciate. You know why? Because it means two different things. Number one, it means thank you.
Noam
Like that’s what it means to think someone, to appreciate, to thank someone. But it also means to increase in value.
Noam
Right. So like when you appreciate something, when we appreciate something and we engage in a life of appreciation, we’re doing the moral, ethical thing by thanking someone, demonstrating that it’s not just about me could be thanking God, it could be thanking the person in front of you. But it also what it does. When we appreciate someone, it increases the value of the relationship in and of itself.
Noam
So it does two things simultaneously, which then that’s that’s part of the experience of joy.
Mijal
Interesting. I never thought of that. You know, juxtaposition of appreciate. So so so you name num like two two paradoxes. And I would say appreciation for me. It’s one of the tools I don’t know if you see it in this way, but if I were to think about like, what are the tools? Right? We said like pursuit of happiness, let’s do unhappiness.
Mijal
But if we’re doing it the right way, let’s say, if we’re pursuing the right thing, if we are defining happiness in the right way, then there are some tools that are disposal, and one of them literally is appreciation. And there are there has been so many studies that basically say even just journaling each night, things that you’re grateful for, things that you’re grateful for, like another person, if you want to increase, you know, strengthen your relationship with them or, you know, whatever that is, that literally just brings up your levels of satisfaction.
Mijal
And by the way, it’s such a Jewish Jewish idea. The rabbi said a long time ago, who is like who is wealthy as a washer, who has, you know, a lot of things as a the person who is happy with what they have, which has to do with appreciation, because appreciation is a tool that you can use.
Mijal
Kind of like not withstanding what you actually have, if you are able to have appreciation for it. It makes the whole thing, more valuable. It also and just because we started with, my dad often taught me that Zuko really needs to be understood. You know, similarly to what you were saying earlier around, like, the agricultural cycle, that the Israelites who were farmers were dealing with back then.
Mijal
And this was the time when, like they they gathered their fruit. It’s almost as if we all got, like our paycheck once a year. Right? So we all get our paycheck in like mid-October, and we get it once a year. And, you know, and hopefully we did. Well, we did. Okay. And that’s exactly when the Hebrew Bible tells us this is when you spend eight days with other people, celebrating together, inviting the stranger into your home, saying thank you for everything that you have and making sure that you don’t get distracted by perhaps like the wrong pursuit and instead focus on on the things that really matter.
Noam
Yeah, I love that. I love that idea. And and it’s a full body experience. That’s the other thing. It’s a full body experience. Like meaning when you go into the sukkah, you, you actually you bring your full body into it. It’s like a hard thing of another commandment that that you do that with. You know what I mean?
Noam
That you bring your it’s like you have to in order to feel that joy, that it’s not it’s not taking an object. It’s not, you know, lighting a candle. It’s you actually just bring your full body into it. And what you were saying before about in, I’m not using the exact words that you use, but my sister in law, Elena, Elena Weissman, my sister in law, she would she I remember when I, when someone I was dating, she was saying like, no, you’re not willing to be vulnerable enough with this person and you’re just not you’re not going there.
Noam
And she looked at me and she said, this line that I always remember. She said, no, I’m. Relationships are not tennis. Relationships are full contact sports. That’s what they are. It’s a full it’s full contact. She wasn’t talking about physically. She was saying like there’s no way to actually engage and like there’s there’s not being, you know, the line, you can’t be half pregnant.
Noam
The same thing is true with, with with these sort of relationships. And like you said before, you have to give up of yourself in order to get there. And if you just inch, you’ll never be there. You’ll never be in a full relationship with really anything with again, with God, with yourself, with, with a significant other, with a sibling, with a friend, however much you do and ever much I do, and however much I give is going to be the the the equal and opposite reaction.
Noam
And I love that line. It stayed with me for 20 plus years about it’s not relationships are not they’re not tennis. It’s that’s not what it is. It’s a it’s a full contact sport. It’s soccer, it’s football, it’s basketball, it’s hockey. That’s that that’s what a real relationship is.
Mijal
And I love how you find a way to bring sports. I, you know, it just takes me a few minutes to, like, visualize. I’m like, okay, what does he mean by tennis? Okay. What does it mean by full contact sports? Okay, now let me think about the metaphor. Okay, fine. And then I can actually think about the, the wisdom that you’re imparting, with this, but maybe we’ll just I’ll just, you know, conclude with this.
Mijal
Noam, I think that, what you just said above, vulnerability and joy is so critical, and it is no surprise that in Sukkot we are commanded to again, going to this temporary hats. And there is a commandment that you have to be able to see the stars, right? Like from the not the ceiling. What’s it called? Like the cover, the,
Noam
How do you say? And Hebrew in English and everyone. One, two, three. No idea.
Mijal
We put like leaves to like, cover the huts. Okay, so we have this, like, leaves and stuff, or some people put, like, straw, I don’t know, but the point is, you have to be able to see the stars. And that is supposed to be an embodied experience of because the sky is open, right? And you are vulnerable to the elements, and you can see the stars and you see yourself as a human being, small in relation to all of it.
Mijal
And the Torah giving us a secret and a gift and telling us, you got to do this if you’re going to be happy, and if you’re going to be able to develop those muscles to appreciate life. So I think that that’s an important reminder for all of us.
Noam
Yeah. And the last reminder for me on my side is this, this, this last idea that Guru Ben says is I might not be saying it perfectly, but it relates to what you were saying earlier about Israel. You said, you know, one of the reasons that maybe there’s that happiness ranking at number eight. And when the unhappiness, the challenges, the resilience leading to these powerful moments also.
Noam
But it’s also, he points out that we need when one of the keys to joy, to happiness is taking micro and macro breaks, micro and macro breaks. And what that means to me is I. I try to imagine living in a world where I was producing, doing, going 365 days a year. And I think about that world and I say, I’m so sad, you know, we don’t want that.
Noam
No way. And so we have this technology that we have as Jews, which is Shabbat, which is every seventh day, no matter what, no ifs, ands or buts. Nothing gets in the way of this technology that we call Shabbat, which is this macro break that we have that is part and parcel of our entire experience. And the more and more Shabbat that we can have.
Noam
I think that and living a life of Shabbat is a way to live a life of of joy, to live a life of that, that. Because what that does is it reduces stress. It reduces this constant go, go, go hamster wheel feeling that many of us could have. And that is another key to the pursuit of happiness, which is not the goal, but to the experience of happiness.
Mijal
So resist the cult of hyper productivity, which is getting worse with the rise of AI. Of course. Okay. Awesome. No, I’m. Thank you for this conversation. Thanks for wearing the t shirt.
Noam
Yeah, I thought it would be nice to wear a prop for a conversation like this.
Mijal
Yeah, yeah, that’s,
Noam
By the way.
Mijal
Yeah.
Noam
What’s the next conversation that we should have that I should bring a prop to?
Mijal
I’m going to think about it, okay? I’m going to.
Mijal
You know, maybe I should bring a prop. It shouldn’t. You know,
Noam
I cannot tell you how much I would love that.
Mijal
Well, you don’t know what I mean by that.
Noam
Well, tell me what you mean.
Mijal
I don’t know, it might be like a boring book, you know, like like like my props and your props are not the same.
Noam
So we all.
Mijal
Maybe like a tennis ball and be like sports. I don’t know, it’s just kidding.
Noam
Love it. All right, I’ll.
Mijal
Speak either way. Thanks for this conversation. I’m really just thinking. I think, like, I’m stuck in thinking about the pursuit of happiness. Leading to what? Happiness and what that looks like. That’s that’s staying with me for a long time. So thank you for that, for that. And wishing you and all of our listeners a happy holiday.
Noam
Amen to that. Speak to you soon.