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The abundance of moadim (holidays) in the month of Tishrei provide us with many opportunities to reflect on key ideas and improve ourselves. However, there is a latent danger in the moadim, a danger particularly potent when we have so many in a row, as Hashem warns us about at the beginning of Sefer Yeshayah:
Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that deal corruptly. They have forsaken Hashem; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel; they have turned away backward… “Why should I care about your numerous sacrifices to Me,” says Hashem. “I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. And I do not delight in the blood of bullocks, or lambs, or he-goats. When you come to appear before Me, who has requested this of your hand, to trample My courts? Bring no more vain grain offerings; it is an offering of abomination to Me. New moon and Shabbos, the calling of convocations - I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly. Your new moons and your festivals, My soul hates. They are a burden to Me; I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide My eyes from you. Even if you daven excessively, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood” (Yeshayah 1:4, 11-15).
In what case will Hashem hate our moadim? And how can we avoid it?
Abarbanel’s first explanation seems to be the simplest reading of the pesukim. He writes:
Since they would gather during the festivals they created to worship foreign gods that they were serving, it is therefore stated that the new moons and festivals you are making for yourselves.
According to this interpretation, this pasuk doesn’t refer to the Torah’s holidays - rather, Hashem is condemning the festivals we established to worship other gods. While this serves as an important warning not to create alien holidays, Abarbanel’s second explanation hits much closer to him: it refers to the holidays in the Torah which Hashem “hated because they were observed solely for eating to satiety and for covering old sins, without any mention of God or service to Him.” In other words, we turned the holidays Hashem gave us to serve Him into a service of the (physical) self.
Why does Hashem condemn this in such strong terms? Why isn’t it like a normal day when if someone were to devote it to pleasure, although unadvisable, we don’t find that Hashem “hates” it? Sforno presents this interpretation in greater detail and in doing so answers our question, but before we understand his approach we need some background. On Yom Tov, there is a halacha of “chatzi l’Hashem v’chatzi lachem” (half for Hashem and half for you) (see Beitzah 15b). The Rambam (Hilchos Shevitas Yom Tov 6:19) explains how it is practiced:
Even though eating and drinking on the festivals are generally included in this positive command [to rejoice on the festivals], one should not eat and drink the entire day. Rather, this is the practice: In the morning, the entire community rises early to their shuls and study halls, where they daven and read from the Torah [passages about] the topic of the day. They then return to their homes to eat and go to the study halls, where they read and learn until midday. After midday, they daven mincha and return to their homes to eat and drink for the remainder of the day and into the night.
According to the Sforno (on Vayikra 23:2), it is the failure to keep this halacha that results in our holidays becoming detestable:
In our rest on the festivals one should intend to cease from mundane activities… and to engage in all of them in Torah and matters of holiness… The intention behind this is that alongside the joy of the day - “Israel shall rejoice in its Creator” - part of the engagement will be in matters of holiness, as our Rabbis said: “A festival is half for Hashem and half for you.” And through this, the Shechinah (“Divine Presence”) will surely rest among Israel, as it is said, “God stands in the congregation of God” (Tehillim 82:1).
We call these festivals “holy gatherings” since they are gatherings of the people for matters of holiness… They are the festivals that I desire for them. However, if you do not call them “holy gatherings,” they will be mundane gatherings, engaging in temporal matters and human pleasures alone, they will not be “My festivals,” but will be “your festivals that I hate” (Yeshayah 1:14).
When we fail to uphold this halacha, our festivities are meaningless pleasure fests. Therefore, we are obligated to establish a proper mindset and framework in the first half of the day to turn ourselves into the “congregation of God” that can engage in the proper simcha in the second half of the day.
If we use our moadim to serve ourselves, we are neglecting the lesson of the day, and by failing to use this opportunity to direct our worship solely to God our holidays are no better than a pagan festival designed to give man any pleasure he wants. To give an example: if someone takes the lulav but doesn’t think about the ideas it represents, they may be missing out on an opportunity to improve themselves but they haven’t harmed themselves. Whereas on the moadim, since there is such a focus on physical pleasures, the failure to redirect those energies and contextualize the pleasure within avodas Hashem turns the holiday into a damaging experience. Most mitzvos presumably will either benefit you or leave you unaffected if you fail to do it properly. However, if you fail to keep the moadim correctly, it will be harmful as it will turn into the worship of the self.1
The halacha of chatzi l’Hashem vchatzi lachem ensures our moadim don’t become blindly focused on the physical component. As important as that part is, it is only valuable when it is subsumed under the larger meaning behind the day of being lifnei Hashem (“before” God), when we become the “congregation of God” and “rejoice in our Creator.”
Have a chag sameach!
I recently attended a shiur from Rav Menachem Leibtag in which he discussed how the Torah contrasts our holidays with idolatrous ones. Whereas idolaters created holidays to appease different gods whenever their particular service was needed, the Torah uses holidays to uproot this compartmentalization and teach us to attribute all of our successes towards the One God who controls everything. If we accept this theory, we can suggest that if we don’t use the holiday to dedicate ourselves to God, it is as if we are celebrating the idolatrous holidays the Torah created our holidays to eradicate. He briefly mentions it in this article, but I can send my notes on that shiur for anyone interested.