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Why does the Torah (תורה) single out serving God without joy *despite* having abundance as the cause of the Temple's destruction? The shiur argues that when luxuries become needs—when we feel owed pleasure rather than mere survival—gratitude becomes impossible. True happiness comes from viewing even our necessities as gifts, not obligations.
Rabbi Zweig analyzes a paradoxical verse in Ki Savo: the Jewish people are punished for not serving God with joy "despite having everything" (Devarim 28:47). The question is twofold: how can someone have everything yet not be happy, and how does this relate to the Talmudic teaching that the Second Temple was destroyed due to senseless hatred? The answer emerges from a story in Gittin about Martha bat Baitos, one of Jerusalem's wealthiest women during the Roman siege. When famine struck, she sent her agent to buy fine flour, but by the time he returned it was sold out. This pattern repeated—white flour, darker flour, barley flour—each time sold out before he returned. Finally, she removed her shoes to search for food herself, stepped on dung, and died. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai applied to her the verse from Ki Savo about the pampered woman "whose foot never touched the ground."
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Devarim 28:47
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