Don’t look past the blessing Hashem gave today
A friend came last year to spend Shabbos with us. He has a good job, healthy children, and by every outward measure a full and blessed life. But Friday night at the table, I watched him only half there. He kept zoning out.
When I asked what was on his mind, he admitted he had a presentation Monday morning that could shape the next few years of his career, and he could not stop running through everything that might go wrong. He was sitting in the middle of Shabbos and living in Monday.
As I listened, I realized how much I could relate. We can be surrounded by blessing today and still struggle to experience it because our minds are already worrying about tomorrow. Sometimes the problem is not that we lack good in our lives. It is that our fear of what might come next keeps us from experiencing the good that is already here.
There is a pasuk in Ki Seitzei, last week’s parsha, that on its surface feels distant from our lives. The Torah describes a person sentenced to death whose body is hung on a tree, and the halacha requires that it not remain there overnight — “Lo salin nivlaso al ha’etz, ki kavor tikberenu bayom hahu.”
He must be buried that same day because leaving him hanging is an affront to Hashem and defiles the land He has given us. Rashi, based on the Gemara in Sanhedrin 46b, explains that a person is created in the image of Hashem; even after committing a terrible crime, his body cannot be left in disgrace. His humanity has not disappeared.
• • •
I once heard a beautiful homiletic reading of this pasuk from Rabbi Efraim Twersky.
The Zohar teaches that the word “hayom,” today, is a remez to Rosh Hashana, the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Chava. On that first day of human history, they confronted the choice between the Etz HaChayim, the Tree of Life, and the Etz HaDaas Tov Vara, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Every Rosh Hashana, that choice confronts us again, as the sifrei chaim and sifrei meisim, the books of life and death, are opened before Hashem. And the Torah tells us, “Uvacharta bachayim.” Choose life.
I used to wonder what that could mean. Who would ever choose death?
And yet, in a quieter way, perhaps we do it all the time.
As Rabbi Twersky explained, the Etz HaDaas Tov Vara represents a way of seeing the world in which every good comes attached to the possibility of bad. The blessing is there, but instead of experiencing it, our minds instinctively search for what might go wrong.
Shabbos arrives, and our minds are already circling next week. We receive something good, and almost immediately begin worrying about how we might lose it. That was my friend at my Shabbos table. And often, it is us as well.
The blessing is real. But so is our ability to miss it.
Perhaps that is what it means to keep eating from the wrong tree.
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And now the pasuk in Ki Seitzei comes alive. “Lo salin nivlaso al ha’etz (do not leave it hanging on the tree overnight).” When a worry attaches itself to the Etz HaDaas Tov Vara, do not allow it to remain there. “Ki kavor tikberenu bayom hahu (bury it that very day).” Return to hayom. Return to what Hashem has given you today.
There will always be a Monday meeting. There will always be something waiting for us after Shabbos. Some of those concerns are real and they deserve their own time. But they do not deserve today’s time too. Worrying about tomorrow does not have to take away the blessings of today.
Perhaps that is what it means to choose life.
As we enter a new year and the books of life and death are opened before Hashem, we are asked once again, Uvacharta bachayim. Choose the Etz HaChayim. Choose hayom. Choose to see the tov. Choose life.
Maybe one of the greatest blessings we can ask for in the coming year is not only that Hashem give us good things, but that He give us the wisdom to recognize them, the presence to experience them, and the gratitude to enjoy them while they are still in our hands.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is spiritual leader of BACH in Long Beach. www.bachlongbeach.com. Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
