As I was serving buckwheat for dinner tonight, my super-picky 10-year-old had a novel idea. “Mom,” she said, “I’ve decided to think of all the food you serve as man [as in Biblical food in the desert]. The man tasted like anything people wanted it to taste, so I’ll think I am eating passion fruit ice cream and that’s what the food will taste like.” Before I had a chance to digest the announcement, she was sitting in front of a clean plate.
These types of miracles don’t happen in our household often (certainly not with this kid), but the timing couldn’t be more perfect. I had just come back from a class on the connection between the curses in Parshat Ki Tavo and the repentance of Elul. My daughter’s bright idea opened a whole new vista in my understanding of this relationship.
The Torah tells us that the man had the taste of a pastry dipped in honey, but it was possible to derive other tastes by cooking or grinding it. Invariably, every morning, it arrived at the Jews’ front step in the exact quantity necessary for the family. Who wouldn’t want to wake up every day to a room-service delivery free of charge? Guess what, after a while the generation of the desert decided it was sick and tired of the man. People are always free to choose their interpretation of any event, so with enough negativity even one of the ultimate Biblical miracles could be (mis)construed as a curse.
This brings us right back to the curses of Ki Tavo. In the middle of the section (Deuteronomy 28:47), G-d reveals the reason for the curses. “Because you have not served Hashem your G-d with joy and with gladness of heart from the abundance of everything.” G-d gives each and every person everything he or she needs in life, yet somehow people often find themselves grumbling about the things they do not have. I am not saying we should not want to attain new and better things (both spiritual and physical) or to change that which needs to be changed. The problem begins when a critical outlook gets in the way of the underlying joy for what is there, when people stop counting their blessings and choose to concentrate on the negative.
The opposite is also true. Every cloud has a silver lining if only we want to find one. With this attitude, even the curses of Ki Tavo can be viewed as blessings in disguise. One such interpretation is offered by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad (interestingly, Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s birthday, Elul 18, usually falls out close to Parshat Ki Tavo). This is how my neighbors chose to relate this morning, when their daughter accidentally ripped the kitchen cabinets off the wall while trying to climb on the counter at 7 AM. They could have focused on the child’s misdeed, on the fright, on the financial loss, on the inconvenience of sweeping the glass from their entire house for three hours, or on the ruined Shabbos atmosphere. Instead, they decided to concentrate on one thing only – the miracle of a child coming our unscathed from what otherwise might have become a tragedy.
This idea of counting the blessings is central to Rosh Hashana. As the new year begins, we approach G-d with a request to grant us another chance. Despite everything we might have done until now, this year we promise to be true to our mission. And what exactly is that mission? Midrash Tanchuma (Naso 17) reveals that G-d’s purpose in the Creation was to establish a dwelling place for Himself in the lower worlds or in other words for man to reveal the divine in the mundane. By becoming cognizant of our many blessings, we acknowledge G-d’s presence in our world. The shift in focus from the negative to the positive frees us from the obsession with “must-have” to thinking about doing our jobs by maximizing that which we already have, not only in physical possessions, but also in talents, relationships, and possibilities.
As any parent knows, nothing puts a damper on the wish to give like an ungrateful child. As Rosh Hashana approaches, may we all find the wisdom to seek out the positive and thus become worthy of even more divine blessing.
