Tag Archives: Epicurus

Apocrypha, Part 2: Ben Sira & Maccabees

Continuing our journey into the Apocrypha, we explore the mysterious books of Ben Sira and the Maccabees. Along the way, we uncover what really happened with King Ptolemy and the 72 Sages who produced the Septuagint, where the name of the continent “Africa” came from, the origin of the ancient holiday called Yom Nicanor, and the true identity of the first rabbi, Shimon haTzadik.

For part one of this series, see here.
For more on “When Jews and Greek were Brothers”, see here.
On the identity of Shimon haTzadik

What is Happiness?

The Torah describes the holiday of Sukkot as being especially happy, and commands us to be akh sameach, “only happy” (Deuteronomy 16:15). When we look across Judaism, we find that there are actually three more holidays that are described similarly. Purim is the next one, of which the Talmud famously states that one must “increase in happiness” during the month in which Purim takes place (Ta’anit 29a). This is based on Scripture, where we read “And to the Jews was light, happiness, joy and prestige” (Esther 8:16). The last two specially-happy days are Tu b’Av and Yom Kippur, of which the Talmud states “there were never in Israel greater days of joy than the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur” (Ta’anit 26b).

Why are these four holidays happier than the others? What is their connection to happiness? To answer that, we must first explore a bigger question: what exactly is happiness? Of course, we have all experienced happiness and innately know what it is. The real question is: what is the proper path to attaining true and lasting happiness? If we take a brief trip through centuries of philosophical thought, we will find that there are four major answers to this question. While every philosopher and school of philosophy had their own slight variation, we can group all of their answers into four categories:

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