Jewish joy is having a moment. It is showing up in grant guidelines, conference themes, cultural gatherings and communal conversations about the future of Jewish life. 

This is good news. After years marked by fear, grief, isolation, polarization and exhaustion, Jewish communities are right to insist that Jewish life must be more than a response to crisis. We need beauty and celebration, but Jewish joy also lives in the quieter confidence that we are part of communities capable of holding us, with practices, people and rituals for moments we might otherwise face alone. 

Dan Balilty for Kavod v’Nichum

Still image from video of Kavod v’Nichum’s Gather & Grow Conference, held in Ojai, Calif., in November 2025.

Part of the challenge is that “joy” is a word we use often but rarely define. In Jewish communal life, joy has become shorthand for anything that feels vibrant, creative or uplifting. Those experiences matter. They lower barriers, create connections and help people feel proud and alive in their Jewishness. But joy that lasts is not only about feeling good. 

Positive psychology helps name something many of us know but don’t often pause to consider in our communal lives: feeling good matters, but it is not the whole story. Psychologist and self-help author Martin Seligman’s PERMA model of flourishing includes positive emotion but also engagement, relationships, meaning and mattering, and accomplishment as well. That gives us a helpful question for Jewish life: When we talk about joy, are we talking only about what makes us feel good, or also about what roots us, connects us and helps us to be part of something larger than ourselves? 

I come to this question through my work at Kavod v’Nichum, where we support Jewish end-of-life rituals and sacred community care. Again and again, we see people encounter forms of meaning and connection that do not resemble conventional ideas of joy, but sustain them deeply. 

If our communities and leadership are serious about cultivating something lasting, we need to look beyond the places where delight is most visible and pay attention to the places where meaning is sustained through practice. 

Chevra kadisha is one of those less obvious places. These sacred communities come together at the end of life to care for the deceased and comfort the living through Jewish ritual and tradition. The work is tender, serious and often hidden from public view. It is not typically where people look when seeking Jewish joy. 

And yet, again and again, people tell us that chevra kadisha is one of the most meaningful ways they participate in Jewish life. They speak about leaving a taharah, the ritual preparation of the body for burial, feeling more awake to life and more attuned to the world around them. Not happy, exactly — that would be the wrong word — but maybe deeply present: connected to body, community, tradition and the fragile gift of being human. 

Chevra kadisha volunteers describe the holiness of offering care when nothing can be fixed, the dignity of Jewish ritual at the end of life and the relief of knowing that no one in their community has to be left alone in death or grief. Across our work at Kavod v’Nichum, in trainings, conversations, gatherings, classes and leadership programs, people are moved not only by what they learn but by the recognition that they are part of something larger than themselves. 

And the impact reaches far beyond the people who do the work. Even for those who never volunteer, there is a great comfort in knowing that their community has people, practices and rituals ready for the most vulnerable moments of life. It is the joy of belonging to a community where care is not only a value we name but a responsibility we share, whether we are the ones offering care or the ones receiving it. 

This is where our conversation about Jewish joy can grow. 

We are right to invest in Jewish experiences that feel creative and alive. Shabbat dinners, concerts, retreats, arts programs and beautiful invitations into Jewish life are not extras. These opportunities help people feel connected, curious and proud, and Jewish life cannot only be something we design for people to receive. A Jewish life grounded in beautiful experiences can inspire us — and a Jewish life grounded in mutual responsibility can sustain us. 

Meaning lives in the practices of communal care: showing up for a shiva minyan, visiting someone who is ill, training volunteers, making sure someone has a meal or a call, or noticing when someone is missing. It is the reassurance that when life becomes uncertain, our communities have practices and people ready to respond. If Jewish communities invest only in experiences that attract people, and not in practices that help people care for one another, we risk building communities that are vibrant but fragile. These rituals shape the whole community, not only those who engage in them, by making care visible, reliable and shared. 

When we hear the term “Jewish joy,” these may not be the first examples that come to mind. These moments may not photograph easily or fit neatly into a campaign. They do not always offer the immediate lift of celebration, but they form the conditions for enduring connection. 

A Jewish life existing only in positive feeling will always be vulnerable to the next hard thing, and there will always be a next hard thing. Connection and shared responsibility give us something sturdy that can hold both celebration and grief, laughter and loss, beauty and fragility. 

There are many corners of Jewish life where deep and serious joy is hiding in plain sight: in caregiving, disability inclusion, elder care, spiritual care, food justice, mutual aid, bikkur cholim, chaplaincy, volunteer leadership, chevra kadisha and the everyday practices of showing up for one another. 

These spaces may not look life-giving from the outside. Yet for those who enter them, they can become profound pathways to Jewish meaning. We need Jewish joy in celebration, urgently and abundantly. But if we only recognize joy when it looks like delight, we will overlook many of the places where Jewish life is deepest, most sustaining and most alive.

Sarit Wishnevski is the executive director of Kavod v’Nichum, a North American organization that empowers, educates and trains chevra kadisha communities to care for the deceased and comfort the living through Jewish ritual and tradition. As both a Wexner Field Fellow and a trained end-of-life doula, Wishnevski brings together Jewish communal leadership and sacred care, supporting communities as they learn to show up for one another when it matters most.