Reflections from Rabbi Ellis

This week we finish Vayikra, the third book of the Torah, and not on the happiest note. This week’s double section is best known for its end, which is a list of forty-nine curses that are bound to befall Israel when we stray from the path of Torah, Mitzvot and an equitable society. The curses are horrible and though we do our best to read them as fast as possible, when it comes to thinking about the Parsha almost all of our attention is devoted to them. This makes sense as the curses are spelled out in excruciating detail while the blessings that proceed them are given only in generalities. We all rubber neck the car crash while barely noticing how well traffic proceeds the other ninety-nine percent of the time.

Upon rereading the blessings, I noticed an interesting detail. In one of the verses of blessing, 26:6, we are promised peace in our land and immediately in the next two verses, 26:7-8, we are told that we will be successful at war. G!d’s blessing does not preclude war, it merely keeps it from crossing our borders. After living for more than a year with a war on our eastern border this verse takes on a different relevance. I understand why being blessed entails that we have peace in our land, but why not everywhere, why does the part of the blessing have to keep war in our world?

A friend recently complained to me that after spending a day doing everything his kids asked for, they were unappreciative and uncooperative, as if they deserved all the privileges that were showered upon them. The human psyche has the unique ability to normalize almost any experience. Anything repeated often enough becomes normal and then banal. A life of privilege and access can become a burden if we don’t have the ability to contextualize it. G!d’s promise at the beginning of our Parsha is not just a life full of blessing, but as well a world that gives us the context to understand just how great our blessings are.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis