Blessings & Curses
People are ever-changing.
That is just a fact of life.
HaShem decides to revive us each morning, and we are supposed to view each day as a gift.
She’hechezarta bi nishmati b’chemlah.
That You, HaShem, who returned my soul to me with kindness.
In my situation specifically, it can be really hard to look at each day as a gift because it is fraught with challenges: turning to get out of bed, getting into my motorized wheelchair, brushing my teeth, washing neigel vassar, getting dressed.. all of those things require assistance from someone else.
V’haya ki tavo el ha’aretz asher HaShem elokecha notain licha nachala virashta v’yashavta buh…
It shall be, when you have come to the land which HaShem your God gives you for an inheritance, and possess it, and dwell there…
And I don’t know this personally, but I can imagine, that it is not easy settling land.
Whether a person was brought there after 40 years of wandering in the desert after 210 years of slavery, or a person went in the aliyah rishona in 1882, or a person went in 2025.
It’s not easy getting used to a new system… Or in the case of bnei Yisrael, a system at all.
My family, unfortunately, has to adapt all the time…
We have aides who help us, me and my siblings, with our acts of daily living (ADLs as they are known in the occupational therapy and physical therapy world.)
It’s because we all have the same exceptionally rare form of Juvenile Onset ALS.
What is happening, is that the sphingolipids, the messengers from our brains, are sending messages to our muscles to do tasks.
Beautiful.
The problem is that there is an overload in the messaging department.
There are too many sphingolipids that are being sent out… And overwhelming the muscles.
It’s not that our muscles don’t know what to do, it’s that the brain is telling an arm or a leg or a finger to do a motion not once, but one thousand times.
And you know what they say about too many cooks…
I don’t have the worst of problems… many people have problems… And I can take it on the chin.
But in Perek 28:1-2 the Torah states that Moshe tells bnei Yisrael:
v’haya im shamoah tishma b’kol HaShem elokecha lishmor la’asot et kol mitzvotav asher anochi mitzavcha hayom u’nitancha HaShem elokecha elyon al kol goyay ha’aretz u’vau alecha kol habrachot ha’ayleh v’he’see’gucha ki tishma b’kol HaShem elokecha.
It shall be, when you have come to the land which HaShem your God gives you for an inheritance, and possess it, and dwell there, that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you shall bring in from your land that Hashem your God gives you; and you shall put it in a basket, and shall go to the place which Hashem your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there.
My family and I… We have always been frum.
I am not judging families who have not.
Chas v’shalom. (God forbid)
Going back as far as we can, our family has always followed HaShem and His Torah.
And I’m not saying that HaShem should work via the dictum of quid pro quo…
But HaShem tells Moshe to tell bnei Yisrael that ‘you will be blessed with the fruits of your body’… aka, your children.
My parents are living embodiments of the phrase osek b’tzarchei tzibur, those who do for the community.
From the time my Dad was a little kid, he helped out with things in the shul of Rabbi Charlop a”h, selling arba minim (the four species we use on Sukkot), helping run the yamim noraim (the High Holy days) services. As an adult, he has worked on various committees; he had a lengthy stint as gabbai sheni,; he coordinated the Simchat Torah kiddush by himself for over a decade, he was on the shul Board, then was a the president; he ran to many lighting stores to find the cheapest light fixtures for the shul, this is just the tip of the iceberg that I can remember; he has dedicated his life to service of the Shul.
My Mom, has taught in Jewish high schools for over 40 years, well over 4,000 students whom she has helped navigate their roles in the Jewish community. Through my mother, I saw what it meant to love children who were not one’s own, and to nurture them, and treat them as one’s own. She is still in touch with a surprising number of her former students. My mom also taught me about the world and its beauty- the beauty in our shul; the stained glass windows, the sky lights, and the harmonies that we all made when our voices joined together. Her having helped the shul in its Art Auction fundraisers way back when has fueled my imagination of what Jewish life could, should and does look like in our home and beyond, as many paintings from the auction ended up in our home. These paintings were a part of my growing up. And it is because of my mom that I learned to see through the hideousness of the world and to see beauty there.
My parents have made me the person that I am, so although I live a life of challenge and hardship, I’ve been taught to turn a neuromuscular disability, which could be easily viewed as a curse, into a blessing. It is who I am; Hashem has made me the way I aam, and I accept His wisdom in all things.
I thank Hashem every day for the warmth and the blessings of my family, both in my home, locally, in my community, and globally, as part of K’lal Yisrael, of which I am so fortunate to be.