First of all, it is forbidden to eat stolen food, and any mitzva utilizing it is disqualified. In contrast, a person who locks the gates of his courtyard and eats and drinks with his children and his wife, without feeding the poor and the embittered, is not engaging in the rejoicing of a mitzva but rather in the rejoicing of his belly. This is not only an act of charity, but, more importantly, an expression of community, fellowship and concern. Your own enjoyment should not be complete if others are alone and suffering. Halakha distances man from madness and the hysteria of desire.
Halakhic enjoyment lacks overintensity, overstimulation and drunkenness of the senses.
However, it possesses the beauty of gentility and the aesthetic splendor of life. When man enjoys the world in accordance with the view of the Halakha, his enjoyment is modest and refined, lacking the mania of sexual desire and the frenzy of gluttony. It created an unbridgeable gap between the physical and the spiritual. In Judaism, the Rav teaches, all spirituality is based on the real, the concrete, the physical. Next week we will discuss the catharsis of the second realm of human experience, namely, the world of emotions.