From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed, our days are filled with decisions. We are constantly making choices, from what to eat, what to wear, what words to say. Some decisions are small, like whether to take the freeway or the back roads. Others are much bigger, shaping our character or even the legacy we leave. Judaism teaches that even in the ordinary, our choices are infused with holiness. And one of the most powerful ways we frame this is through the blessings we say before learning Torah or performing mitzvot.

Parshat Ki Tavo includes one of the most memorable covenantal moments in the Torah. As the Israelites prepare to enter the Land of Israel, Moses instructs them to divide between two mountains: Mount Gerizim, symbolizing blessings, and Mount Ebal, symbolizing curses. There, they publicly affirm their commitment to God’s commandments, declaring aloud the blessings that flow from faithfulness and the consequences of neglect. It’s a dramatic reminder that Torah is not abstract; it lives in our choices, and those choices have impact.

This moment at Gerizim and Ebal resonates with blessings we say every day. Before we engage with sacred text, we recite the Birkat HaTorah: “Blessed are you … who has chosen us and given us the Torah.” Before performing a commandment, we say the Birkat HaMitzvot: “…who has sanctified us with commandments and commanded us to…” These words echo the covenantal choice in Ki Tavo. Each blessing is a declaration that Torah and mitzvot are not just rituals we check off, but pathways to blessing—ways we bring holiness into our lives.

Standing between those two mountains, the Israelites learn that blessing doesn’t descend on us passively. It’s the result of choosing to live with intention, guided by Torah. Every time we recite these blessings, we symbolically return to that valley between Gerizim and Ebal, and we choose again.

This week, as we read Ki Tavo, may we hear the call from those ancient mountains in our own lives. When we bless Torah study and mitzvot, let us remember we are not simply reciting words, but affirming our covenantal choice to walk in blessing in our daily actions, big and small. 

I am a catastrophizer. That means I foresee catastrophe, real or imagined. I cannot watch my children run down a hill without picturing them falling and getting hurt. When there are reckless drivers on the road, I envision a car accident waiting to happen. Even in situations that aren’t life-threatening, I can let the worst-case scenario get the best of me, whether it’s a program that might flop or vacation plans that might fall through. It’s easy to want to give up and ask why do it if it’s just going to end up terribly anyway?

Rationally, I know my kids won’t injure themselves every time they play, and I know that sometimes things turn out just fine even if they don’t go as expected. But our brains seem to be very good at getting us worked up anyway, and believe it or not, the Torah knew this would happen and warns against it.

Our Torah portion this week, Parshat Ki Tavo, brings us closer to the final lessons God wants the Israelite nation to learn before they enter into the promised land. Our text reminds us again of the blessings and curses that come to us as we choose to follow or ignore the laws of the Torah. Specifically, we learn of the requirement to make an offering of “first fruits” for the priests in the Beit HaMikdash, and the different ways in which we are supposed to thank God and give praise (before prayer was a daily activity). Finally, the text reminds us of how we’re supposed to take time to rebuke one another when we’ve made a misstep and the ways in which we can do so with compassion and kindness.

In the midst of the section of warnings against stepping out of line with God’s commands, we read this verse in chapter 28, verse 67: “In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you shall say, ‘If only it were morning!’ – because of what your heart shall dread and your eyes shall see.” In other words, as bad as the reality will be, you will fear that the future will be worse. Fear of misfortune is often worse than any actual misfortune that might occur, as our imaginations conjure up all sorts of dreadful experiences we may feel we deserve.

I’m guessing I’m not alone. It’s easy to fall into catastrophizing because the human imagination and our anxious brains are phenomenally creative. However, nothing beats experience, and the Torah this week reminds us to let experience rather than overthinking set our expectations. One by one, perhaps we can work to silence our “what ifs.”

Life as a homeowner means being in a constant state of looking around to see what our next project might be. When we bought our house, in fact, we bought it knowing that we would one day lift the roof over the attic and turn that space into a fourth bedroom. Before we had even moved in, before we even purchased the house, we already had plans to change it. It’s not that the house wasn’t inhabitable, it fully was; it was that this house would become the place where our family would grow, change, learn, and make mistakes. It was perfectly imperfect, which made it right for us.

There are other ways to experience this feeling of perpetual creative evolution. Perhaps it is a piece of artwork that you keep coming back to, changing one piece or adding something new. Perhaps it is your garden that appears just right, and then you find that one spot you just have to alter. In our Torah portion this week, the Israelites learn about entering the Land of Israel, and they too learn about being settled in the perfectly imperfect. 

Our Torah portion this week, Parshat Ki Tavo, brings us closer to the final lessons God wants the Israelite nation to learn before they enter into the promised land. Our text reminds us again of the blessings and curses that come to us as we choose to follow or ignore the laws of the Torah. Specifically, we learn of the requirement to make an offering of “first fruits” for the priests in the Beit HaMikdash, and the different ways in which we are supposed to thank God and give praise (before prayer was a daily activity). Finally, the text reminds us of how we’re supposed to take time to rebuke one another when we’ve made a misstep and the ways in which we can do so with compassion and kindness.

As the Israelites prepare to enter the land, God instructs them to “build an altar of unhewn stones.” That is, they aren’t supposed to mess with the stones or try to make them perfect. The altar for God in the land that God had promised them needs to be made up of stones that are imperfect and broken, that fit together the best they can, and aren’t too carefully constructed.

This is because, like moving into a new home and finding all the ways you can change the space, the Israelites needed to explore it, live in it, feel it in all its imperfections. As much as we might like to keep adjusting and fixing, The Torah reminds us not to jump into crafting and changing things the second we see them, but instead take time to notice the ways in which a little crack here or a weird corner there can actually be holy too. 

Did you nibble on your children when they were young? I find that I can’t help it, and I mean this in the most motherly, unaggressive way you can imagine. Especially when my kids were babies, they were totally irresistible with their little rolls of love and sweet faces. I would devour them with my kisses. A few years ago, researchers developed a term for this feeling, which they call “cute aggression.” In other words, it’s the point at which something is so cute you just want to smoosh it or eat it up. Of course that feeling goes away as they mature and get a bit smellier and lose those baby rolls, but I still live for their snuggles (when they’re willing to snuggle). 

What’s been difficult these last 18 months is realizing how much we depend on human contact as a coping mechanism. We continue to give so much of ourselves without realizing we’re depleting our human contact reserves without the ability to refill them as often as we could before. This week, the Torah has an interesting and seemingly macabre teaching about how we give of ourselves physically and emotionally.

Our Torah portion this week, Parshat Ki Tavo, brings us closer to the final lessons God wants the Israelite nation to learn before they enter into the promised land. Our text reminds us again of the blessings and curses that come to us as we choose to follow or ignore the laws of the Torah. Specifically, we learn of the requirement to make an offering of “first fruits” for the priests in the Beit HaMikdash, and the different ways in which we are supposed to thank God and give praise (before prayer was a daily activity). Finally, the text reminds us of how we’re supposed to take time to rebuke one another when we’ve taken a misstep and the ways in which we can do so with compassion and kindness.

In the giving of these rules and laws we receive a strange lesson: “You shall eat your own issue, the flesh of your sons and daughters that God has assigned to you, because of the desperate straits to which your enemy shall reduce you.” At first glance, chapter 28, verse 53 is rather odd if not downright troublesome. Is God predicting that we’re going to need to eat our own children because of our enemies? That certainly makes me question if God has our best interests at heart. What could this mean if we move past a gruesome literal interpretation?

Perhaps the verse is a metaphor for the way in which we might “devour” or consume each other’s needs in times of trouble and moments of distress. This verse also reminds us that in old age, or in periods of struggle, we often turn to each other and give of ourselves in ways that might be all consuming. But that reminder comes with the warning that we risk depleting our personal resources when we let ourselves be consumed.  

Part of our daily humanity is finding the balance between giving and receiving support. When we don’t support others, we become disconnected from the community and turn into enemies, but when we don’t draw boundaries for ourselves, we can become our own enemies. May we take this lesson with us into the new year.

I’ve always found the ways in which we think and talk about our senses and how they can deceive us as interesting and often humorous. Think of phrases like “hiding in plain sight” or “it’s always in the last place you look.” To me, these are more than just pithy observational cliches. They speak to what it means to “see” versus what it means to bear witness to the world. We can “see” a lot happening around us, but rarely do we stop to actually take it in, think about its meaning, and react to the need presented before us. When we walk around the world with our eyes truly opened, we not only observe injustice and hatred, suffering and strife, but we are then motivated to take action and work toward change. 

As the traditional morning blessing from the siddur (prayer book) reads, “Blessed are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the world, who opens our eyes.” Each morning we thank God for the opportunity first to take in the beauty of creation, and second to move beyond that to begin to actually see the work that we can do to make our world a different, and perhaps better place. 

This is evident in our Torah portion for the week, Parshat Ki Tavo. This week we read the section of the Torah that again reminds us of the blessings and curses that come to us as we choose to follow or ignore the laws of the Torah. Specifically we learn of the requirement to make an offering of first fruits for the priests in the Beit HaMikdash, and the different ways in which we are supposed to thank God and give praise (before prayer was a daily thing). Finally, the text reminds us of how we’re supposed to take time to rebuke one another when we’ve taken a misstep and the ways in which we can do so with compassion and kindness.

As the text nears the end, Moses begins his third giant speech to the Israelite nation. He shares: “To this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.” Abraham Joshua Heschel interprets this to mean “the ability to understand, to see or hear the divine significance of events, may be granted or withheld from man. One may see great wonders but remain entirely insensitive.” 

In other words, as human beings we often see the world with our eyes, but remain blind to the problems right in front of us. As the wise Torah sage Paul Simon expressed about another of the five senses, “Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”

Parshat Ki Tavo is the yearly reminder that it’s not enough to use our senses passively; we must open our eyes and ears to really see the true world around us – the good, the bad, and what we can work together to fix.