joy in the shlep

I write to you with a very full heart. I am so deeply grateful to serve this community and journey through the Days of Awe together, sweat, tears, giggles and all! 

Many people have asked me how I recover from leading Yom Kippur. The answer is that I drink a ton of electrolytes and I start building my sukkah, ideally that night, right after neilah. It is kind of bananas but also brilliant. Building a sukkah is the way I have learned to metabolize all of the adrenaline and literally come back to earth.

More than one caring friend has suggested I hire a task rabbit to at least shlep the wooden panel from my garage to my deck. And this year I was extra tired and tempted. But in considering it, I realized that if I outsourced it, I would personally miss it. The shlep, oddly, is part of the joy for me.  

A story is told about the joy found in spiritual shleping…

Once long ago, in a place where water was still brought from the river to prepare to make matzah for Passover, an elderly rabbi was seen carrying two heavy buckets full of water with a yoke tied around his neck. A neighbor riding by in a horse-drawn cart saw him and said, "Come here, rabbi! Put your buckets on my wagon, and I'll give you a ride."  The rabbi looked up smiling, and said, "I have the joy of doing this mitzvah only once a year, and you want me to give it away to a horse!?" 

In this folktale, the burden itself has become a source of joy. In this story the shlep is a physical act, but that’s not accessible or meaningful to all of us. But rest assured shlepping is equally spiritual and emotional – anything where you really feel and appreciate the work of doing the mitzvah. This is referred to as simcha shel mitzvah - the joy found in doing a mitzvah.

When the ancient Israelites wandered through the wilderness for forty years, a certain group of Levites were given the privilege of carrying the Holy Ark. The very Ark I talked about on Kol Nidre.

“How heavy it must have been,” somebody commented, “with two sets of massive stone tablets inside it!” 

“No,” a Levite answered. “The Ark carried those of us who bore it.” 

The same is true of any mitzvah carried out with joy. 
It elevates and carries us as we do it.

I felt that this year as my kids harvested heaps of skakh and I rode with the branches hanging off of my bicycle like peacock feathers. It felt like flying. 

The festival of Sukkot, which begins this evening, is known as zman simchateinu, a festival of joy. A time when we get to savor the changing season. During the festival of Sukkot, the primary mitzvah is to sit in a sukkah – literally leyshev basukkah – though the forecast this week is not promising. 

Whether or not you built a sukkah this year, I invite you to consider your relationship to mitzvot in this way. Mitzvot take effort, and there is joy to be found in the shelp. Whether we are visiting someone who is sick, opening our home to guests, donating 10% of our income, or building a sukkah. 

As we begin the new year, may we orient towards simcha shel mitzvah, the joy and privilege of getting to observe mitzvot.