T23 (Tinyana) PNC - Joy that Pursues Atzvus and Drags it Inside

Beginner: Picture dancers in a circle. Sometimes they grab a sad person standing outside and force him into the ring until he is dancing too. So in serving Hashem: there is a small joy that simply pushes sadness aside, and there is a higher joy that hunts the sadness down and drags it into the dance. The verse 'Sasson ve-simchah yasigu, ve-nasu yagon va-anachah' (Yeshayah 35:10) is read backwards: the joy chases sorrow, catches it, and forces it into the holiness it was fleeing. Pure sorrow runs from joy because, being from the other side, it does not want to become a vehicle for kedushah — so we must coerce it in. Intermediate: Yagon va-anachah is read here not as fugitive but as prey: simchah ha-yasigu — joy must overtake them. The mashal of pulling the depressed bystander into the rikud cashes out the dynamic of converting marah shechorah itself, not merely displacing it. Cf. Tinyana T24 ('mitzvah gedolah lihiyos be-simchah tamid'), Tinyana T10 (yishuv ha-daas via simchah). Practical: when atzvus surfaces during prayer, do not banish it — sing it. The transmutation is the avodah.