It's a wonderful thing to be Jewish. It's not just that there is such a deep spiritual tradition. Not only that there is a strong moral code and commitment to social responsibility. Sometimes being Jewish is just fun!

For one thing there are those little Talmudic sayings, little tidbits of philosophy that sum up a great deal. One of my favorites is "When you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." Unfortunately, this is less entertaining when you are wrestling with preparing a drash and realize for an awfully long time that you have no idea where you are going.

Another wonderful thing about Judaism is the Jewish ability to live with irony, with contradictions and inconsistencies. Life is filled with them. But Jewish philosophy seems to take them in stride, indeed to relish them and, not to reconcile them so much as to make of them something whole.

In this vein, I was examining the various traditions and explanations of the symbols of Succot by our Rabbis. As I should have expected, I found many quite different interpretations, and some seemed contradictory. Not to worry. One of the books I was researching said, "When the Sages of the Talmud disagree regarding homiletical interpretations of scripture, we must assume both viewpoints were true, each in its own way." Can you imagine anything more Jewish?

Succot does appear to have two opposite intentions, two very different feelings we are intended to experience. On the one hand, there is the objective of humility. Just at harvest time, just as Jews are experiencing abundance and wealth, God commands us to leave our homes and inhabit a rather fragile and insubstantial booth. Rabbi Akiva advised that Succot was in this way to keep us from excessive pride at the sight of our abundance. Jews must remember that whatever their efforts, they are in the end dependent on God's will, on God's protection, as were our ancestors when they crossed the desert. In the Kaballah, the succah is not just the symbol but actually can envelop us in the Clouds of Glory which God provided to protect the Jews at that time.

This theme of humility is reinforced by the timing of Succot, coming just one week after Yom Kippur. In some interpretations Succot is the final of three stages, from Shavuous through the High Holidays to Succot, of absorbing the purpose of Torah into knowledge and understanding, a final stage that cannot be reached without the atonement and redemption at Yom Kippur.

We are instructed as well to feed the poor before taking of our Succot meal. The water libation is another peculiarity to Succot, reminding us of the importance of rain, the preciousness of water to our very survival.

This is all rather serious stuff. Indeed Flavius Josephus tells us that when one of the kings of Israel made light of the water ceremony, he was pelted with esrogim by the congregation in the Temple, and the resulting melee led to 6,000 deaths. Very serious stuff indeed.

This would seem to make of Succot a rather somber holiday. But that is exactly what Succot is not intended to be. Just the opposite. Succot is the only one of three festivals on which the Bible enjoins us to rejoice. Z'man simchatenu, the time of our rejoicing.

And in case one might think this just a passing phrase, not so. There is no Biblical reference to experiencing joy on Pesach, and only one for Shavuous. But three times, the Bible instructs to make of this festival a time of joy.

Why such joy? And how can one experience pure joy when reminded that one's wealth is subject to God's providence, that our shelter is in the end fragile before God's power. We have been reminded of this quite literally during the slow passage over our land of Hurricane Floyd, where with all our preparations and predictions, our lives and property depended in the end on the slightest variation in the path of the storm, a variation over which we had no control. Why joy, when in feeding the poor that one meal, one is reminded that there is an awful lot of poverty and misery out there for which perhaps not enough redemption was done during the High Holy Days?

Humility, yes. Compassion, for sure. Thankfulness, indeed. Pleasure even at having come through yet another year intact. But joy?

Can we feel comfortable in experiencing joy on this Succot? How does the command to experience joy on this holiday fit with all the other messages of Succot?

Americans are not immune to joy. Preparing for this drash, I searched the internet for books that begin with "The joy of...." To my astonishment, the computer came up with more than 400 titles.

There seems to be a guide to joy today for every thing we can experience, for every type of lifestyle:

There is available for our guidance: the joy of working, the joy of working at home, and the joy of not working.

There is the joy of eating, the joy of eating naturally and the joy of eating natural food. And following that, the joy of slimming. But if that direction doesn't suit you, there is the joy of eating French food, the joy of pasta, the joy of cheesecake, and indeed the joy of chocolate. Something for everyone.

There is the joy of Yiddish, the joy of Hebrew, the joy of Irish humor, and the Joy of Getting along with the Chinese. Perhaps that last is the basis of some of Clinton's foreign policy.

There is the joy of success, the joy of money, and the joy of knowledge. But if that is too daunting, never fear. There is out there, in the land of barnesandnoble.com, the joy of failure, the joy of being wrong, the joy of not knowing it all.

There is the joy of meditation, and friendship (though this is listed as a book for women? hmmm), and for every conceivable hobby: gardening, painting, ballooning, and - for Rabbi Seidel -- the joy of juggling. There is the joy of Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, and many other composers. And there is the intriguing title, the joy of two pianos. Maybe that is a juggling book as well.

There is joy for every lifestyle. There is the joy of marriage, of parenting, of grandparenting, and there is of course the joy of sex. But there is also the joy of not being married, the joy of divorce, the joy of being single, the joy of no sex.

If you are in a hurry, no problem. There is the joy of thinking big, the subtitle of which is "becoming a genius in no time flat."

If you are angry, there is the joy of cold revenge.

And if you get tired of joy itself, never fear: there is the joy of complaining, the joy of stress, the joy of depression, and I kid you not the joy of suffering.

One could conclude that we American are drenched in joy. But as I suspect, we could also conclude that we have such a hard time experiencing real joy, that we need guides to find it in any possible aspect of our life. It seems everywhere we turn, we are being instructed how to be joyous, as if we could not possibly do it on our own.

If you attend a baseball game today, even in the wonderful Camden Yards stadium in Baltimore, huge electronic billboards tell you when to cheer, how to cheer, and for whom you are cheering. There is so much organized instruction on how to enjoy the game, it is hard to concentrate -- and truly enjoy -- the game itself.

On television, we are inundated with sitcoms. But to make sure we know how to enjoy them, laugh tracks are inserted to tell us when, and how hard to laugh.

It is understandable that we have difficulty in experiencing joy and seem to need help. Americans we have learned work longer hours and with fewer days of vacation than people in any other industrialized country. We no longer have days of enforced quiet and contemplation, unless you honor the Sabbath, which frankly few of us do. Our stores are now open seven days a week, often 24 hours a day. E-commerce permits us to do business from any spot, home or business, day and night. We have to check our regular mail, our voice mail and our e-mail before we can even begin to prepare our dinner in the evening.

We are inundated with information that makes us anything but joyful. My wife, Helen, and I listen to NPR news on the way to and from work. We are scarcely past our block before we have taken on the human abuses in East Timor, the brutality in Sierra Leone, the corruption of the police in Los Angeles, the violent resistance to multiethnic society in Kosovo, the proliferation of guns on our streets and the plight of public education. Just as we have absorbed all that into our consciousness and our conscience, we are told to worry about the extinction of the Monarch butterfly from genetically engineered corn (and this just as we had been able to stop worrying about the bald eagle). And then there is a piece on the disintegration of pre-1930 movie masters, something about which I thought I would not have to worry until the sonorous voice on NPR tells me "This is part of our history that could be lost forever." So I dutifully add it to my list of worries.

And when we ride home in the evening, NPR is there to tell us that none of these problems about which we were instructed in the morning have been solved that day.

Some of us are also resistant to simple joy. I am as guilty as anyone. Despite retiring earlier this year, -- my wife tells me I do not know the meaning of the term -- each day I put off playing the piano, which I said I would now have time to do every day -- to work on one more article, answer one more letter, pay one more bill. There is all that responsibility, or self-imposed responsibility. Or just resistance to joy. That good old-fashioned guilt.

When we examine the symbols of Succot, it is certainly easy to move immediately to such world problems, and to adjust our mind to weighty and worrisome things, rather than to joy. There is central to Succot the theme of shelter. The succah reminds us of God's sheltering of us in the desert, either entirely by the Clouds of Glory, for which the succah is but a symbol, or by the commandment to build booths, whichever explanation you choose. But also, as we sit in our succah we can be reminded that today, shelter is a major concern for much of mankind. The United Nations' Habitat Agency tells us that 25% of the world's population, 1.5 billion people, is either homeless or has inadequate shelter. Urbanization is occurring at a fantastic rate, most rapidly in Africa where rural life is no longer profitable or safe. Even a wonderful private program like Habitat for Humanity, which Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter promote, has built only 13,000 houses in Africa in 25 years, noble but only a tiny scratch upon the surface of the problem.

Water also plays a special role in the rituals of Succot. It is the only festival where water as well as wine libations are emphasized. In a recent book titled "Tapped Out," former Senator Paul Simon warns us that water shortages will cause severe problems in the coming century, from Las Vegas to Uzbekistan, from the Middle East to Bangladesh. Water has been at the heart of wars in many parts of the world, shaping history -- seven wars in South Africa at the turn of the century began from water disputes between British colonizers and indigenous people and led to British domination of that country and all the subsequent history that flowed from that. Water is one of the most intractable and difficult issues in the Middle East peace process. Worldwide, some eighty nations are experiencing shortages of water sufficient to endanger food supplies, health and political stability.

In the UN members spend a great deal of time arguing over whether people should have a right to shelter, or for that matter a right to food, to health and development. Whether these should be rights along with those of free speech, religion, and absence of oppression, whether in other words so-called "economic rights" are equivalent to civil and political rights and should be similarly enforced. One might think this a rather esoteric argument. But it is a reflection of our deeper lack of consensus on how to solve these enormous problems of inequality in the world. How much is the responsibility of individuals, of the economy, of the governments of those poor countries? How much instead is it a moral imperative for which we all share some responsibility? There is no consensus, indeed some sharp controversy. So we continue to argue these issues in seemingly esoteric ways, while the problems fester.

So it is that one could easily project from the symbols of Succot weighty problems that should occupy our minds at this time. But we are instructed rather to be joyous.

Why is this? Perhaps it is because experiencing joy at the mysteries and miracles of creation is the beginning of wisdom about all such issues. Perhaps when the Sages say that Succot is the culmination of our understanding of Torah, they are telling us that joy is the culmination and the beginning of our real absorption of Torah and all its teachings. Without joy at the miracles of creation, our abilities and understanding are diminished.

The poet, playwright, President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, put it this way:

Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence.

Looking up through the roof of the succah, at the stars, one can truly rejoice in the miracle of creation of the universe, enormously complex facets of which are revealed to us one by one today by telescopes, satellites and the like; but each discovery only leaving us more awed by the magnificence of this creation, by its remaining mysteries that still stretch out beyond to infinity.

When we grasp the lulav, esrog and leaves of myrtle and willow, we can rejoice in the miracle whereby tiny seeds, with water and nutrients, grow into an abundance of food, flowers, and plants. Even if we have not yet learned to optimize this miraculous abundance, we rejoice in its magic, its potential which we have only begun to tap.

We can experience the joy of family and friendship, that intangible attachment to those whom we love that so enriches our lives that nothing can adequately describe it.

For those, many among us, who have experienced the threat of losing all this, there is the joy of each surviving day. To experience once more the sun upon our bodies, the green around us, the magnificence of man's own creations in museums and galleries. To take one day for this right here on the Mall, as Helen and I did recently, to simply allow ourselves to embrace this magnificence, this is to experience the joy of creation and all its potential.

Only with this joy can we perhaps undertake all the great tasks ahead of us with the right spirit and wisdom. This perhaps is what the Sages saw in Succot as the culmination of our becoming God's people.

But God knew this people well. God saw that once she gave us the Ten Commandments, then the whole Torah, then the oral tradition, and through that 236 individual mitzvot, and added a social conscience plus a strong dose of ambition as well, that we could never sit back and indulge ourselves in joy. Not this Jewish people. More likely to write such books as the Joy of Suffering!

So God did one more thing.

GOD COMMANDED THAT WE CELEBRATE SUCCOT WITH JOY. DO IT! AND DON'T ARGUE!

Now we can count it as a mitzvot! And do it with a clean conscience.

So celebrate this Succot with joy. Hag Semaiach, Z'man Simchatenu -- the time of our joy.