The Emotional Curriculum of Yiddishkeit

Every year around this time, I notice myself asking the same question.

The Three Weeks begin, the music turns off, the celebrations quiet down, and the mourning intensifies with the halachos of the nine days. I instinctively check in with myself:

Am I feeling sad enough?

Some years, the answer is yes. The restrictions naturally create a sense of loss, and I find myself thinking more deeply about the absence of the Beis HaMikdash and all that it represents. Some years, unfortunately, the three weeks into the nine days feel like an all too appropriate reaction to the current happenings in the wider world I’m living in. 

Other years... not so much.

Life doesn't stop because the calendar changes. There are still grandchildren to hug, conversations to enjoy, Shabbos oasis and ordinary summer moments that bring genuine happiness. I’m loving the slower pace of the longer days and the time it allows me to look back into topics, learning more deeply about whatever I choose. This year, I've been particularly enjoying the preparations for discussions taking place in the current round of our Tefillah series, where I find myself returning again and again to the relationship between our inner emotional lives and our avodas Hashem. And so I find myself wondering:

Can I honestly be enjoying life while also entering a period of mourning? Am I missing something?

The question itself made me realize something I had never really stopped to appreciate: Judaism is remarkably interested in our emotional lives.

Not only in what we do, not only in what we believe, but even (especially? No, I’ll leave that as even:)) in what we feel.

On Rosh Hashanah, we stand in awe. On Yom Tov, we are commanded to be happy. During the Nine Days, we mourn. On Shabbos, we are instructed to ‘delight in the day’ and we aren’t allowed to cry. Throughout the year we are encouraged to cultivate love of Hashem, fear of Hashem, gratitude, compassion, humility, hope, and longing.

It is an extraordinary thing when you stop to think about it. Torah is not merely a guidebook for behavior. It is, in many ways, an education of the heart.

Which raises an obvious question.

What happens if I don't happen to feel what the calendar says I should be feeling?

What if I don't naturally feel sadness during the Nine Days?

Or what if I'm carrying profound grief during Purim?

Or anxiety on Yom Tov?

Surely the Torah cannot be asking us simply to switch emotions on command (asks every teenager out there).

I don't think that's what it's asking at all- that’s a misunderstanding of the assignment.

The Torah isn't replacing our emotions- It's expanding them and allowing us to tap into every part of them.

A full range of emotion is a necessary part of a mature, complete life. Our culture has become understandably enamored with positivity. We speak about gratitude, optimism, resilience, abundance, and positive thinking. Those of you who know me know that I am hardly opposed to those ideas—I devoted an entire course to Proactive Bitachon (available here) because I genuinely believe that learning to notice Hashem's goodness and cultivate authentic optimism is a central part of avodas Hashem, and a reflection of a high level of worked on Emunah. But a forced happy, happy, happy does not a healthy human make.

Interestingly, I find that modern psychology has been moving away from that way of thinking as well.

Dr. Lisa Damour, whose work on adolescent emotional health I have found particularly thoughtful, repeatedly makes the point that mental health is not the absence of painful emotions. It is not perpetual happiness or relentless positivity. Quite the opposite. A healthy emotional life is the capacity to experience the appropriate emotion for the situation. When something heartbreaking happens, sadness is not evidence that something has gone wrong. It is evidence that something has gone right. Your emotional system is functioning exactly as it was designed to function.

That distinction feels incredibly important.

Optimism is never meant to become emotional censorship- the goal isn’t to feel happy all the time. It’s to become emotionally whole. And that’s something that the Torah has been guiding us toward all along. 

Rather than encouraging us to remain permanently upbeat, Judaism insists that every emotion has its season. There is a time for simchah and a time for aveilus. A time for gratitude and a time for longing. A time to dance and a time to cry. A time to experience the security of Shabbos and a time to feel the ache of galus.

The Jewish calendar refuses to let us become emotionally one-dimensional.

I've written before about the surprisingly long distance between the head and the heart. We often imagine that authentic spiritual growth means waiting until our emotions naturally appear before we act. More often, Torah asks us to do the opposite. We learn, we repeat, we practice, we perform the mitzvah, and little by little the heart catches up. The goal isn't to fake emotion. It's to gently cultivate it over time.

Perhaps the Nine Days work the same way.

Notice the language of Chazal;  They don't say, "Be sad." They say:

משנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה.

The language is subtle, but I think it matters. Halachah reshapes the environment in which emotion grows.

The music stops, the celebrations become quieter, certain pleasures are temporarily set aside.

Our external world changes—not because these actions magically manufacture sadness, but because body, mind, and soul have never been as separate as we sometimes imagine. Our behavior influences our inner life. By quieting the external noise, we create space to notice emotions that were perhaps present all along.

So while the Nine Days are not asking us to invent grief, they are asking us to make room for it.

The truth is that every one of us already carries sorrow.

We mourn loved ones we miss. Relationships that never became what we hoped they would. Children who struggle. Illnesses that linger. Opportunities that disappeared. Dreams that we quietly gave up on at some point. Every one of us carries little "t" traumas alongside life's larger ones. Last year I wrote that all of our personal pain ultimately reflects the larger reality of galus—the world as it exists while Hashem's Presence remains hidden. Perhaps this time of year simply widens the lens, allowing our private losses to become a doorway into appreciating the national loss we all share.

The Nine Days don't ask us to stop enjoying our children or appreciating a beautiful summer day, they simply remind us that there is another truth living alongside those joys.

And turns out that is true throughout the entire Jewish year.

Shabbos doesn't ask us to deny our worries. It reminds us that beneath them lies the possibility of menuchah.

Purim doesn't erase pain. It teaches us that joy can coexist with it when you can tap into Hashem’s bigger plan.

Yom Kippur doesn't create sincerity. It simply removes enough distractions for honesty to emerge.

Every season of the Jewish year invites us to awaken another room within ourselves. The Torah refuses to let us settle into only one way of experiencing the world. Instead, year after year, season after season, it patiently stretches us toward becoming people capable of feeling more deeply, more honestly, and more completely.

As we enter the Nine Days this week, perhaps the question isn't: "Am I sad enough?"

Perhaps the better question is: "What part of my heart is the Torah inviting me to embody right now?"

Warmly,

Mrs. Aliza Feder

The following source is from the sefer of Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach,  הליכות שלמה הלכות בין המיצרם פרק יד

גם בימים אלו התורה והתפילה יהיו בשמחה-
ויהיה רגיל להדריך דאע"פ שמשנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה, עם כל זה התורה והתפילה יהיו בשמחה וכמו שכתבו הספרים..

ופשוט שאין כל סתירה בדבר, שהרי גם ביום תשעה באב עצמו עלינו להרגיש כי "אשרינו מה טוב חלקנו" ולשמוח בהיותנו העם הנבחר שקיבל את התורה מסיני... ומאידך ראוי לכל ירא שמים להיות מיצר ודואג על חורבן בית המקדש כל ימות השנה כמבואר בשו"ע (סי' א' ס"ג), אלא שההבדל הוא איזה חלק יש להרגיש יותר, ובימים אלו יש להרגיש יותר את הצער והאבלות על החורבן והגלות.

PS: If this conversation resonated with you, you may also enjoy a few related newsletters from the archive:

• Traveling the Longest Road – on why the journey from our minds to our hearts is often much longer than we expect.

• Getting Our Hearts and Minds Aligned – practical thoughts on how Torah helps us gently cultivate emotions rather than simply waiting for them to appear.

• Can We Talk About Feelings (in my Avodas Hashem)? – a deeper look at the role emotions play in serving Hashem and why neither suppressing nor chasing feelings leads to authentic avodah.