Apples are in season. The weather is changing. Kids are back in school. Rosh Hashana is almost here.
Are you ready?
This week’s Torah portion of Ki Tavo is a good place to look for guidance about how to get ready for Rosh Hashana.
Ki Tavo includes blessings for observing G-d’s laws, and curses that might be the consequences of not observing G-d’s law. The Torah describes that Moshe divides the tribes into half. Half are assigned to stand on Mount Gerizim (Blessings) and half assigned to Mount Aival (Curses).
About the curses, the Torah tells us that:
….because you did not serve G-d, your G-d, with joy and with gladness of heart, when (you had an) abundance of everything. (Devarim, Chapter 28, verse 47. Translation from the Gutnick Edition of the Book of Deuteronomy)
The blessings are great. The curses are scary. As a motivation to change, do we respond to blessings, or fear of punishment?
Considering how many years of suffering the Jewish people have endured, it seems like we’ve had enough of punishment.
How about some joy and blessing?
What does the Torah mean when it tells us that these curses are a consequence of not serving G-d with joy?
The Yalkut Me’am Lo’ez provides three full pages of narrative commentary on this one short verse. Here are a few tidbits, complements of my own loose translation:
The Holy One Blessed Be He might test a person in one of two ways. One way is the test of poverty, and the other is the test of wealth. Both tests are difficult. And if the wealthy person doesn’t withstand the test, the Holy One Blessed Be He sends afflictions.
A story is told about Rav Broka, who found Eliyahu the Prophet, may he rest in peace, in the market. Rabbi Broka asked the Prophet if anyone around the market merited a portion in the World to Come. At that, two people approached. Eliyahu told Rabbi Broka that these two had a share in the World to Come. Rabbi Broka asked them: “What have you done to merit a portion in the World to Come?” They answered: “We are joyous, and we make others joyous. When we see people who are sad, we make them happy.”
When they said: “We are happy, and we make others happy”, this is a lesson brought down to teach us that if a person wants to make others happy, he himself must be joyous…..
It’s the way of the world that when a person is successful, he links his success to his intelligence and strength, and doesn’t remember the the kindness of HaShem, May He be Blessed. Only when the wheel turns and things go badly, the person says “What will I do, and the Holy One Blessed be He decrees that I lose my money?”
Although not specifically about this verse, here’s how one Chassidic master uses metaphor, and humor, to explain the lengthy exile:
Reb Yisrael of Ruzhin once walked into his beis midrash (study hall) and said to the chassidim (followers) who happened to be there: “I will tell you a story. A villager once came to town for Rosh HaShana. Like many villagers in those days, he was so ignorant that he did not even know how to read the prayers. When he walked into the synagogue on the morning of the holy day he gazed around in all directions without opening his mouth. After a little while, when the other worshipers reached Shemoneh Esreh (the silent devotion prayers), he observed that some of them were weeping.
“Now this is strange.” he thought. “There hasn’t been any fighting or anything. Why are they weeping?’
“He thought it out, and arrived at the conclusion that they were no doubt weeping because they had to stay so late in shul (synagogue), when they were hungry. And since he too was hungry, he soon found himself weeping together with them all.
“After Shmoneh Esreh, he had a new problem: Why did they not cry now? It then occurred to him that he had noticed in the morning that his hostess had put a hard lump of meat into the soup, and the longer it was left on the fire, the easier would it be to chew. It followed, therefore, that going home late was really no cause for tears. But when the time came to hear the shofar, his original question presented itself afresh, for everyone was crying again! He soon found an explanation, however, and told himself the following: ‘True, it is that the broth will be richer after all this time – but we haven’t got the strength to wait so long!’ And with this pathetic cry from the heart he again began to weep with them all…”
After Reb Yierael had left the room, the chassdim said to each other: “That was a parable about this long exile.”
(From A Treasury of Chassidic Tales on the Festivals by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, Mesorah Publications, NY 1981 p. 50)
More recently, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, comments on this verse of the Torah. The Rebbe encourages us to increase in joy. Joy is an emotion which breaks all barriers. What if we were to take that joy and break down the spiritual barriers that hold back the Redemption from Exile? (From the Gutnick Chumash Devarim, p. 205.)
Questions:
- What does joy mean in Jewish life?
- What does it mean to you?
- Is fear of punishment ever an effective deterrent?
- How is the Chassidic story a metaphor for the coming of Redemption?