Every year my wife and I spend time in France. This year we did the unthinkable: we went to Disney Paris. Alright, so I had a discount coupon. Getting there involved easy train rides from Le Marais that brought us to the entrance of “Happiest Place on Earth.” But was it? Not unless crowds, waiting on long lines, and overpaying for food makes you happy. Nonetheless, we laughed and found joy in being there.

The 2026 World Happiness Report tells us that, yet again, the happiest countries in the world are Scandinavian. After three weeks visiting Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, I have to tell you, the people there seem genuinely content with their lot in life, and with the socialism G-d apparently gave them. Not far down the list, we find Israel ranking an astonishing eighth place. I wondered how this could be. After all, much of the world seems to hate Israel, and its people, along with Jews everywhere, are frequent targets of violent attacks by adversaries like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iranian proxies.

I believe the answer lies less in circumstance, more in something Judaism has understood for three thousand years.

For millennia, philosophers have debated what it means to live a happy life. The field of positive psychology focuses on the factors that allow people to flourish. Researchers study gratitude, meaning, optimism, resilience, close relationships, and acts of kindness as measurable contributors to well-being. Judaism has been teaching many of these same principles for more than three thousand years.

Perhaps the more interesting question is not whether positive psychology confirms Judaism. Rather, it is whether Judaism has quietly practiced positive psychology all along.

What the Language Itself Tells Us

The Hebrew language offers an important clue. Biblical Hebrew contains no exact equivalent for our modern word happiness. Instead, Judaism speaks of simcha (joy), osher (blessedness), shalom (wholeness), and menuchat hanefesh (inner tranquility). These are related but distinct concepts. Happiness, from a Jewish perspective, is not merely feeling good. It is living well.

The Torah itself makes this explicit, and in a rather unsettling way. Among the curses in Deuteronomy, we read: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, when you had an abundance of everything” (Deuteronomy 28:47). Notice what the verse does not say. It does not condemn the absence of blessing. It condemns the absence of joy in the presence of blessing. The Torah seems to assume that abundance without simcha is itself a kind of curse, a life materially full and spiritually empty.

Modern Adaptation, Ancient Warning

Modern psychology increasingly reaches a similar conclusion. One of positive psychology’s most influential findings is that people quickly get used to pleasurable experiences, a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation. The excitement of a new car, a larger home, or a promotion fades surprisingly quickly as it becomes today’s normal. If happiness depends only on accumulating pleasurable........

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