Yes, this is the first time in the lifetimes of most Jews alive today that we, as a people, are under so much attack on so many fronts. The cornerstone of Zionism, that if only we had a country with an army to defend us, we could genuinely bid “Never Again” to genocide. Certainly, for the first time we can conceive of there is a significant body of Jewish hostages, cruelly kept as human shields, as bargaining chips and just to enjoy Jewish vulnerability that we had all thought was finally a thing of the far distant past.

Serious people seriously ask can we halachically, in accordance with Jewish religious law, greet each other with the phrase Chag Sameach, may you festival be joyous? Shall we sing the beloved songs concluding the Seder? Can we possibly fulfill the Torah injunction, V’Samachta b’Chagecha, and you shall rejoice in your festival? And even if we can, technically, isn’t it possibly in monumental poor taste to carry on as usual?

Of course the Nation of Israel remains at a war begun just over half-a-year ago, at the conclusion of the previous Chag, Sukkot, on it’s concluding holiday, Simchat Torah (remembering the multiple ironies that Sukkot itself is called Z’man Simchateinu, the Time Of Our Happiness and Simchat Torah means and celebrates Joy In Our Torah). For those of us living in the State of Israel, not a one of us is untouched, there being zero degrees of separation here between us. We all remain obsessed over the hostages, however many even remain alive, and our committed to their return (or to our forcing their return, either by military pressure of, invoking the old and hard to recall triumph of the rescue at Entebbe almost fifty years ago (July 4th, 1976, heroically led by the brother of our current Prime Minister, Binyomin Netanyahu (who also participated in that rescue), Yonatan Netanyahu).

Yes, all that is true, but those who advocate reducing or eliminating the joy miss the greater point.

Joyously celebrating each of our festivals is, as I mentioned, a Torah injunction, a Mitzvah. Not only are mitzvot eternally binding, the very meaning of mitzvah, which comes from the root צוות, which means a tightly bound group, means to join. While our personal experience might be significant to our individual spiritual journeys, our collective mitzvot, like this one, joins us together across place and through time, making us the unique nation, Am Yisrael who we are.

It’s not that we’re smarter than others or more successful, more virtuous or more gifted by God that defines us as a people, so much as it is our three -and-a-half thousand year commitment to binding ourselves together under the sovereignty of The Creator.

Some might try to define our insistence on happiness, davka, especially, on this year’s chag as a sign of resilience under fire, as it were. But nothing is further than the truth.Rather it is our gutty realism. Pesach is eternal. The current war, like all wars, is just in passing. As a people, we’ve experienced many wars, many of them much more threatening and damaging and existential, than this one.

Perhaps because the US has never been invaded, Americans have an unrealistic fear and revulsion to war.

Sure, it’s a drag and no one, I repeat NO ONE here is untouched, but life goes on. Israel remains in the “top happiest countries” list. Perhaps it’s a matter of expectations and, more likely, there’s a translation error. “Shalom”, Peace, for which we pray at least three times every day, doesn’t mean the absence of battles, but a sense of completion and fullness. That we have yet to reach those goals is no reason to end the millennia of hard work so ingloriously.

Together we will be victorious

Chag Sameach