A businessman boarded a plane to find, sitting next to him, an elegant woman wearing the largest, most stunning diamond ring he had ever seen. He asked her about it.

“This is the Bexfield diamond,” she said. “It is beautiful, but there is a terrible curse that goes with it.”

“What’s the curse?” the man asked.
“Mr. Bexfield.”

Curses and blessings are the subject much of this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, and the curses are much more frightening than Mr. Bexfield in this classic joke. As this parahshah is generally read during the last week’s of the Jewish year, it is no wonder that the Tradition added Psalm 27 to the daily liturgy for morning and evening. It begins, “The Eternal is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear? The Eternal is the stronghold of my life, of whom should I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1) As the New Year approaches, and as we examine our deeds, we may fear that we have missed the mark and not lived up the potential which we hoped we would reach when the last year had begun – especially after studying this week’s Torah portion.

In the Torah there is a simple truth: for every action, there is a reaction. The rabbis later summed this up by teaching that “Mitzvah Gorreret Mitzvah; Averah Gorreret Averah – Performing a Mitzvah leads to the continued performance of Mitzvot; performing a transgression leads to the continued performance of transgressions.” And as emphasized in Parshat Ki Tavo, the performance of Mitzvot is rewarded with blessings, while the performance of transgressions is rewarded with curses. And what curses these are! They are so frightening that the sections of the Torah in which they are found are read very quickly and in a very soft voice.

Over the nearly five decades of my rabbinate, the distribution of blessings and curses in the read world has never seemed so cut and dried. From the early years of providing pastoral care to Jews from all over the world who found themselves in the hospitals associated with the “World Famous Mayo Clinic” to this very day, I have cared for people who viewed their circumstances as cursed, for the most part. I will never forget a very religious woman whom I met in Rochester Methodist Hospital who lamented that she felt that she had led a very frum life, that she was observant of the Mitzvot, that she shared her good fortune with others through giving Tzedakah, and yet here she was suffering this illness, unsure that she would recover. “Why, Rabbi, am I being punished in this manner?” I heard this from hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the years. Why am I being cursed, when I am a good person?

I came to understand that blessings and curses are not necessarily meted out exactly as described in our Torah, because blessings and curses are more often subjective than objective. Two people can present with similar maladies, and yet one might feel blessed, while the other feels cursed. One of my congregants in another community was involved in a terrible motorcycle accident and broke a number of bones including his hip. He had a lot of pain and was immobilized for quite a long period of time until he could slowly progress to functioning. He could have felt cursed that he had to suffer in such a way, and perhaps he did at first. However, he also felt blessed to have survived the accident! This injury provided him with a a wake up call for the rest of his life.

Blessings and curses are a means by which we attempt to make meaning out of what is occurring to us and around us. They are often generated by the critical query, “Why me?” As the New Year fast approaches, may we enter it feeling blessed for the gift of life which we enjoy, for the loved ones with whom we share it, and for the opportunity to that we have to live meaningful and purposeful ives. May we all be inscribed and sealed for a blessed year and a year in which we are aware of all our blessings.

Shabbat Shalom! Shanah Tovah Uveruchah!

Rabbi Josef Davidson is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical and Cantorial Association, which coordinates the d’var Torah for the Jewish Light.