Curses are easy. It’s blessings that are hard to come by. This is a point this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, makes abundantly clear, with over fifty verses of curses and just a scant sixteen of blessings. We are meant to be overwhelmed by the horrors that God will inflict upon us when we turn away from our people. The blessings, on the other hand, are quiet and unassuming. As is Jewish custom, we must whisper them to one another, for fear of that which we love being taken care from us. Kinahora, as we say in Yiddish, which roughly translates into “beware of the evil eye.”
The Torah assumes it is easy to tell the difference between the two. I would beg to differ. Sometimes, the things we most look forward to, end up having negative consequences down the road (i.e. that big, delicious piece of chocolate cake, will ultimately leave us with a belly ache a few hours later.) And, the things that are hard in our lives are sometimes the best teachers. We, as human beings, are conditioned to see the negative. In order to combat that instinct we must train ourselves to look at the positive instead. Perhaps, this is why the rabbis remind us to say one hundred blessings ever day of our lives. That is the only way to cut the ninety-eight curses of Ki Tavodown to size.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
p.s. – Just a reminder that we have Slichot on Saturday night at Shir Shalom. I look forward to seeing you there.
Last Updated on 11/03/2019 by Marc Slonim