Reeh: Surviving Calamity

To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. — Roberta Flack 

Continuing his farewell speech, Moses declares that God places before each of us blessings and curses. The blessings are stated as rewards for what we do right. The curses are punishments for what we do wrong. They both come from God. There are a multiplicity of ways and explanations as to how to understand divine reward and punishment and the related age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.

The Sfat Emet in 5635 (1875) advises us to understand our personal mishaps as messages from God. God is trying to get our attention. Hence, once we understand and incorporate the divine message into our lives, the “curse” has done its job. However, if we wallow in our suffering, if we blame God or the world for the undeserved ill that befalls us, if we don’t learn the lesson, if we don’t move on – the likely outcome is that the curse will continue to run its course, or in some cases become more severe.

But if we accept God’s will, the Sfat Emet continues, if we understand deeply that both the good and the bad come from God, if we seek to improve ourselves after our calamities, then there is a higher probability that we will grow due to our misfortunes, that we will gain the compassion, the empathy, the resilience that we may have been lacking.

May we withstand our trials and get through them stronger, wiser and kinder.

Shabbat Shalom,

Ben-Tzion

Dedication

To the memory of Gene Wilder.