Blessings and Curses

Rabbi Melanie Aron

August 23, 2002

The Torah Portion this week Ki Tavo deals significantly with blessing & curses

The curses with which Moses threatens the people, outnumber the blessings about 3 to 1. These curses are not like Yiddish curses, with an element humor, as for example: "may you grow like an onion and head in the ground feet in the air". They are very detailed and graphic, so much so that they are traditionally not chanted aloud but only whispered.

Recently, I came across a story, an incident related to the reading of this parshah in an article by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. When he was still a young man, in the 1950's it happened that on Shabbat Ki Tavo he visited the shtiebl, the small synagogue, of the Klauzenberger Rebbe.

Towards the end of the Torah reading, as they began the reading of the sheeshee portion, the Rebbe called out Hecher ( the Yiddish for louder). The baal Korei, the Torah reader. stopped, confused, then thinking he had misunderstood, he continued whispering.

Again the Rebbe shouted - "hecher, hecher". The congregation was shocked. What was going on? Perhaps the rebbe had become disoriented, unhinged. After all, he was still reeling from the loss of his community in World War II, and the personal loss of 12 members of his immediate family.

The reader had no choice but to follow the Rebbe's instructions and so read verses of the Torah in a loud voice.

At the end of the reading, the Rebbe explained himself to the congregation, which was made up primarily of refugees from Europe. "From curses we have nothing to fear", he said, " there is no evil we have not experienced. But after the curses, the Torah promises blessings and a return to the land. Let God hear the curses so God will know it's time for the blessings."

In this case, the challenge was not just to God, but also to his Chassidim whom he eventually convinced to make aliyah to Netanyah and to open the hospital adjacent to Kiryat Sanz.

As I read our Torah portion this year, I felt a little bit like that Rebbe - we have not lacked for tzuris this year, for curses.

First, Terrorism & War, here in the US and in Israel

Less overwhealming, but still significant, were the problems confronting the Jewish communities in Argentina, and in France.

Then just this week the flooding in Central Europe brought death and homelessness to so many. In an email from the World Union for Progressive Judaism today, I learned that our Reform congregations in Czechoslovakia and Germany have also been effected, with members of the congregation losing their homes and Torahs, books and other ritual items damaged.

Tonight as we look on the full moon of Elul, we are ready to say enough with this year and it's curses.

Let the new year and its blessings begin.

I mentioned that in the Torah portion, curses outnumber the blessings by a large margin, but this was not the outlook of the rabbis.

They turned the Biblical blessing into the rabbinic berachah and then piled opportunity upon opportunity for b'ruchahs to be said.

A berachah for eating bread, for drinking wine, a berachah for cookies or vegetables, for rainbows, for friends we haven't seen for a long time. There is a blessing for a new home, for good news, for seeing the ocean or a blossoming tree.

Shai Agnon taught the world a bruchah when he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966. When he was introduced to the King of Norway, he recited for the first time in his life the blessing upon seeing an earthly monarch. Baruch Atah......Who shares majesty with human royalty.

Blessings, in this sense are a very special Jewish thing . As Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman points out, they don't make something holy - bread doesn't become holy when you say hamotzi - but rather berachot recognize the spark of holiness already inherent within the objects and experiences we encounter every day.

Through our daily lives and its special transitional moments, we open ourselves up to the miracles all around us when we recite berachot.