At the end of every day, Edith Zakai-Or still thinks about the things that gave her joy during the day.
It’s an exercise in happiness, where you write down in a notebook three positive things that happened that day, to boost your sense of contentment.
Even today, three and a half years after she took over as the CEO of Maytiv Center for Positive Psychology at Reichman University in Herzliya, she finds it a helpful way to summarize her day.
“It’s very important to be able to catch these happy or inspiring moments and give place for them in your life,” she explains. “If you do this every day, then cognitively what happens is that you become primed for it.
“All day you think, ‘What am I going to write in my notebook?’ and then you accumulate positive things during the day, and make gratitude an important part of your life. It’s absolutely a part of being happier.”
Zakai-Or is the living embodiment of positive psychology. She’s bright and bubbly, helpful, engaged, and bursting with genuine energy.
This is Israel, though, and Israel at a very hard time, and on her door are two apparently conflicting signs. One reads “The Happiness Club at Reichman University.” The other is one of the bumper stickers so ubiquitous now in Israel, showing a photo of a young man killed in the wake of October 7, a partner of one of her students.
It’s an unexpectedly succinct statement about the state of Israel’s heart today – a country still in the midst of trauma and grieving, somehow finding the space to prioritize and even find happiness.
Promoting happiness in education
Maytiv, which employs 68, was set up 15 years ago, and like the Happiness Studies Academy, an online course on happiness that was founded in Israel, its roots came from former Harvard happiness guru Tal Ben-Shahar.
Its goal is to teach educators how to use the tools of positive psychology to help themselves and their students improve their wellbeing and productivity.
Over the years, the center has worked with 1,200 schools, translating to more than 25,000 teachers and a million students.
“Being a teacher in Israel has a lot of meaning attached, but it’s very challenging,” admits Zakai-Or. “The first thing we do is to give the teachers perspective and positive psychology tools to take into their own lives.”
The next step is to share these tools with students. Maytiv has developed lessons adapted to kindergarten through 12th grade.
Why teach happiness?
“There’s a lot more to happiness than people understand,” explains Zakai-Or. “It’s a pleasure to feel happy, right? But when we are experiencing positive emotions, we are so much more than that.
“We are physically healthier, more creative, more friendly, and have more opportunities open to us. We focus on what we have in our lives, rather than what we don’t. As a result, we become more successful. When we are more successful, we experience more positive emotions.
“So, in order to experience life in the best way, we need to be able to create positive emotions in our lives and use them to the benefit of people around us. It makes our life even better.”
Research into the impact of these tools in Israeli schools over the last 15 years has shown that they lead to dramatic improvements. Violence goes down, academic achievements and grades improve and emotional wellbeing increases.
“Great ideas come from hope and positivity. Humanity did not step on the moon because of negativity.”
Zakai-Or explains that teaching happiness in schools is not just about finding ways to make yourself more contented, it’s also about finding ways to deal with negative emotions.
“It’s important to experience the full range of emotion because if you don’t also feel negative emotions, you don’t feel anything,” explains Zakai-Or. “We teach teachers how to handle these negative emotions with self-regulation in both themselves and their students.
“The concept is that we feel what we feel, whether its anger or upset, but then we choose how to behave. We make a choice to manage our emotions and not let them manage us. We control the situation.
“Teachers find this so useful and tell us that it makes such a difference in class and that they are able to dismantle horrible situations of violence or anger and find resolutions,” explains Zakai-Or.
Positive emotion is the reason to live
She admits that our first main instinct, like all animals, is survival.
“It’s negative emotions that protect us from harm. When we are scared of a tiger, we run away. It’s a very important part of our lives because it helps us survive and adapt to reality better.
“But the problem is that the survival mode is very basic. That will only take us part of the way. The upper layer is what we survive for. Being happy allows us to grow, to overcome challenges, to learn and flourish. Positive emotions are the reason to live. Great ideas come from hope and positivity. Humanity did not step on the moon because of negativity.”
She believes this is essential for anyone undergoing difficult times to remember. “To overcome challenging times, we have to have an internal engine that takes us further and up. Happiness is part of this,” she says.
Happiness spreads happiness
Though everyone has a different definition of happiness, Zakai-Or stands by Ben Shahar’s definition – that happiness is a combination of positive emotion and a connection to meaning.
“When you experience positive emotion, it’s a good moment, but when you are able to connect this to something that is wider, deeper and more profound, that has meaning for you, this is more substantial and will hold a wider impact in your life.”
She also firmly believes that finding happiness within us is not a selfish act, but actually brings happiness to others.
“Emotion is contagious, like a virus. If I come into a room and I’m happy with positive energy, this will rub off on the people I meet, and then this energy continues on with them. It’s exponential.
“We have a responsibility towards the people around us to bring them happiness and joy, rather than depression and anxiety. People who bring positive emotions to their environment make the world a better place. And we want to make the world a better place. I think the core is that fact that we deserve to be happy.”
In a crisis, make room for happiness
Of course, no discussion on happiness is complete in Israel these days without recognition of how hard it has been in the last two years, and particularly since October 7.
Maytiv had begun to expand internationally, but when war broke out, it concentrated its efforts within Israel to help teachers, students, soldiers, families – anyone who might need it, to be more resilient and deal with the crisis in a more effective way.
“I became hoarse from talking,” admits Zakai-Or. “From the second week of the war we hit the ground running, creating programs immediately because it was such a challenging time.
“It was good for us too,” she acknowledges. “Being able to help others was very helpful for us.”
The idea of actively seeking out happiness during a difficult time can seem strange, but Zakai-Or firmly believes this gives us the strength to go on.
“During the war, people would ask me: ‘Is it okay that I go and have coffee with my husband when terrible things are happening all around me?’ And I would say, ‘of course,’ because if you take this moment to be happy, you create a positive energy within yourself that you can later give to other people who need it.”
The surge in volunteering in Israel since October 7, 2023, is an indication of this, she believes.
“It’s because people know they are a part of something that is making other people feel happy. And they need to bring this energy in. If you’re empty, how can you bring positive energy into anything? You have to create something good within yourself. And if coffee with your husband is the thing that does it, go do it.”
She gives an example from her own life. During the war when her son was serving in Lebanon, she and her husband booked tickets to see Paul McCartney in Paris. She decided that if her son was still in Lebanon she wouldn’t go.
A day before they were due to fly, her son came out of Lebanon. She asked him how he felt about them going abroad. He told her: ‘Mum, I’m not fighting for you to sit at home and cry. I am fighting for you to be happy and healthy and enjoy life. And bring me back macaroons too!’
“I really think that our children were, and are, fighting not for us to sit at home and cry, but for us to flourish.”
How on earth is Israel so happy?
In the World Happiness Report published every March, Israel usually scores in the top five countries.
“I don’t know how we will score this year, because we have never had a year like this,” acknowledges Zakai-Or. “But I can guess that we’re still going to score higher than other countries, because there’s something about Israel, even now.”
One of the foundational reasons, she believes, is that it’s a very family oriented society. In the United States, when children graduate from high school they go to far-off colleges and return twice a year or so. In Israel, she says, there’s always a Shabbat dinner every week when family meet, and there’s always someone there for you.
Aside from family connections, there are also other strong networks, including the army.
“Being a part of a society where you know that there is someone there for you is critical for your emotional and physical wellbeing. And I think that this is absolutely a part of us being happier than other people. Even at a time like this.”
She also believes another motivating factor is that Israel has always been in conflict, and was founded after the Holocausy. “As challenging as it is to be here, we appreciate the fact that we can be here, and have our own country, and have this society that is connected. This gratitude is very related to happiness,” she says.
Learning from Israel
How can other countries learn from Israel?
Zakai-Or tells me about an inadvertent experiment she carried out in the US.
She and her family were living in Palo Alto, California, for a few years. While she loved it, and thought the people she met there were interesting, she missed the sense of community.
“So when my neighbor got sick, I prepared soup. And when the Australian neighbor around the corner had a baby, I prepared cake. You know, because this is how we behave. And I was really surprised to see that people adopted this, they liked it, and saw that it was nice.”
When she spotted a boy in the neighborhood riding a bike with no hands, she stopped him, found out who he was, and called his mother to let her know.
“I didn’t know who this boy was, but I felt responsible. Because being part of a community like Israel means that you take responsibility for things around you. And this is not American. But it was easy to implement in California, because people want to connect. When you show them that they can, then they do. It’s really easy to create a community. This is something that could be mimicked.”
Three quick tips for happiness
Finding happiness is not an overnight pursuit, but Zakai-Or agrees to provide three quick tips for our readers.
1. You can make a change in your life. “Believing that you can make yourself happier – that’s the ground rule.”
2. Practice gratitude. “This ritual of writing three things that you’re grateful for every night makes you happier.”
3. Exercise is the key to everything. “Choose anything,” says Zakai-Or. “Walk, swim, run, whatever. This improves your mood without fail. Just once a day. Well, every other day. Exercise absolutely makes you happier.”
Before joining Maytiv, Zakai-Or worked in the field of organizational psychology. She was invited to take up the post, and – in keeping with all that she teaches — feels enormous gratitude for the opportunity.
“I’m really proud to be part of this movement. I feel deeply this is the way we should run our lives. It’s about creating solutions, creating happiness, and helping people to feel and become better.”
“By the way,” she adds. “My husband says I’m a lot nicer since I started working here. So it works, yes.”
Note from Editor: Israel dropped three places in the 2025 World Happiness Report’s global rankings, falling from 5th to 8th place.
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