Shabbat Shalom GRJC
Weekly Emails to the Congregation
Parshat Ki Tavo 2007
Shabbat Shalom to the GRJC family,
Tonight, we light candles at 7:13 PM.
Friday night services will begin at 8 PM, and Saturday morning
services will begin at 9 AM.
We read this week from parshat Ki Tavo in the Book of Devarim
(Deuteronomy). We have a two-part passage in this week’s
reading. The first part of this passage describes how God
will reward us for living according to the Torah. The second
part describes how life will not be easy for us. Many of the
“curses” that appear in the second part are exact opposites of the
blessings from the first part.
These two sections led me to think about how we respond to other
people’s successes and setbacks in life. We can compare
success in life with God rewarding the Jewish people for their
faithfulness, and we can compare setbacks in life with the way our
parsha describes God’s action against those who are not faithful
to the Torah.
When another person achieves a goal, how do we respond?
Ideally, we respond by offering congratulations and good wishes.
We give the person a gift or an honor in synagogue as a way of
recognizing a special achievement. Sometimes, though, we
might face other feelings. We might feel that we wish
we had achieved what the other person achieved, even though we
only say this to ourselves.
And so there are times when we might feel upset that something
positive happened in another person’s life. Carrying this
thought to the Torah, did God ever get upset with the Israelites
for FOLLOWING the Torah? God does get upset with the
Israelites when they follow the letter but not the spirit of the
Torah. For example, the prophets constantly lament the way
that Jews presented lots of sacrifices to the Temple, but were
dishonest in business or unkind to strangers.
When another person experiences a setback, how do we respond?
Ideally, we respond by offering words of support and consolation.
We try to help the person cope with the setback and help them move
forward. Sometimes, though, we might feel something akin to
contentment. Especially if that person was not friendly to
us before, we might think “justice was served.”
These mixed emotions that arise when others experience success and
setbacks are part of the human experience. At the same time,
we should try our best to figure out why we feel the way we do.
Is it the success or setback itself that sparked these feelings,
or is it something about ourselves that we wish to change that
sparked these feelings? At the most basic level, we should
keep to the Golden Rule when considering how to respond to what
happens in other people’s lives and in our own. We can
respond the way that we would hope others would respond to us.
With wishes for a Shabbat of peace and rest,
Rabbi Tow
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