At our Shabbat table one Friday night, a guest said that he could not wait to return home. We were confused: his house was only a fifteen-minute walk away.
He clarified that by home he meant Israel. Having just returned to Melbourne from a visit, he already felt far from home. Later, he explained to me that in Israel, as a Jew among other Jews, he could hold his head high. He was describing a unique feeling—the joy of feeling fully at home.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once explained the difference between happiness and joy in the Jewish tradition. Happiness, he said, is something we can experience as individuals. Joy, in the Torah, is something we create together.
In Parashat Ki Tavo, the Torah describes Israelite farmers bringing the first fruits of their harvest to the Temple as an expression of gratitude to God. After placing the basket before God, the farmer is commanded to rejoice in God’s bounty together with the Levite and the stranger (Deuteronomy 26:10–11).
But how can the Torah command us to rejoice? It can command us to gather together, but can it command us to feel joy?
The Torah may be saying something different: the very act of gathering together creates joy. As Rabbi Sacks puts it, “Simcha, joy, in the Torah is never about individuals. It is always about something we share.”
Reuven Rubin’s The Bringing of the First Fruits—a triptych, or painting comprised of three connected panels—illustrates this idea
The middle panel depicts pioneers and Jews who migrated from the East carrying fruit from the Land of Israel. A woman holds a pomegranate in one hand and a baby in the other. Although the land is dry, it is fruitful—both in produce and in children. On either side, an Arab shepherd and a Bedouin sit alone. At the center, the Jews are joined together in bringing the first fruits.
When Rubin’s artwork was exhibited in Jerusalem in 1924, he described the joy he experienced in the Land of Israel: “Here, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in Haifa and Tiberias, I feel myself reborn.… As the desert revives and blooms under the hands of the pioneers, so do I feel awakening in me all my latent energies.”
Rubin’s sense of rebirth reminds me of my Friday night guest. He did not say that life in Israel was easier. He said that there he could hold his head high.
Perhaps that is one of the deepest forms of simcha: not joy despite our Jewish identity, but joy that comes from living it openly.
Ilana Epstein is Rebbetzin of Mizrachi Melbourne, serving alongside her husband, Rabbi Daniel Epstein, Rabbi of the community. Prior to moving to Australia, they served at Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London, previously the Cockfosters and North Southgate community, following seventeen years living and working in Israel.
Ilana is a writer and programme developer with experience in Jewish leadership and Holocaust education. She has led educational delegations to Poland with the Holocaust Educational Trust and March of the Living UK since 2015. In 2024, she was commissioned to write historical material for the adaptation of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
Ilana has served as Director of Educational Projects at Jewish Futures and previously as an educator for the United Synagogue. She devised and leads a development programme for the wives of European rabbis on behalf of the Conference of European Rabbis, and was selected as an inaugural Sacks Scholar in 2023.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
