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.

When my children were little, we read a lot of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle. The bear goes around and shares what it sees in the world. A red bird, a blue horse, the bear lists all the animals it sees on his daily adventure. Between this book and games of “I Spy” we spent a lot of time practicing using our eyes to take in the world around us.

Each morning our daily prayers give us a list of bodily functions and sensory moments to give thanks for. The morning blessings can read like a checklist of your day: wake up, straighten and stretch our bodies out, put on clothes, eat breakfast, look at the world around us. Each of these is a unique blessing. I’m often struck by the words of the blessing about seeing, “Pokeach Ivrim.” Blessed is God, who opens the eyes of the blind. This is a curious prayer for a couple of reasons. Are we supposed to read it literally, believing that God actually causes blindness and then miraculous recovery? And if you haven’t experienced this miracle, why would you even say this blessing in the present tense anyway? I’ve often asked kids what it means to see, and their answers are always enlightening.

Parshat Ki Tavo, which we read this week, 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.

Chapter 28, verse 26 takes into account the notion of blindness in a whole new way. “As a blind man gropes in the dark,” the verse reads. The question from the Talmud seems obvious: Isn’t a blind man equally disadvantaged both in daylight and in darkness? No, it answers, in daylight he can hope that others will see him and help him. In the dark, however, there will be no one to give help. In this way, the Torah suggests that the sense of sight is about more than observation and utility. To see the world and to see people also means to see their needs and their state of mind.

The Torah, in Parshat Ki Tavo, pushes us to look beyond the surface and into the nuances and deepness of the situations around us. We are asked first to look for poverty, hatred, injustice, and then not just see it, but stand up and make change.

When I teach the brachah of opening your eyes, I do an exercise asking everyone to close their eyes tightly for a while, then open them wide. The room usually appears brighter and looks a bit different. As I ask people to open their eyes I ask, what do you see?

So, close your eyes tightly, keep them closed, and then open them wide. What do you see? How will you help?

In the year after my father died, I lost my ability to speak to God. I couldn’t open the siddur, the words which I had read my entire life fell meaningless on my lips. My heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t share a prayer of a loving God when I felt so unloved, and I couldn’t praise the creator of the world when I felt like my world had been so deeply crushed. My prayers were more filled with silence or rage than calm and compassion.

There are clearly times when the words on the page of the siddur, the formatted, clear-cut, and poetic verse, simply does not fit the moment, the experience, or the mood of prayer that day. I often find myself questioning, “What words truly speak to my heart today?” I know this experience is far from unique to me. As an educator I often hear profound prayers and thoughts about God from the tiniest human beings. A laugh at the silent Amidah in shul is a beautiful way for a baby to lighten my soul, and a request for God’s “presents” instead of “presence” in prayer is in a way a beautiful misunderstanding of a really important concept. But, what would God think about all these outside-the-box prayers?

Luckily, we have our portion this week, Parshat Ki Tavo to shed some light. This is the section of the Torah that 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.

Within the text is the commandment to build the altar using “unhewn stones.” These stones are not perfect. They are not cleanly and evenly quarried; they are not polished or shiny. The altar on which we are to offer up our sacrifice, and with it our prayers, to God is not perfect or pristine. It is made up of whole, natural, imperfect stones. Martin Buber, the great philosopher, is quoted as saying, “Eloquent polished prayer is like hewn, polished stone. Here the ‘unhewn’ (lit. whole) stones represent the inarticulate yearning of a sincere heart – which God prefers.”

Perfection is not prayer. Prayer is made up of the words of our heart in raw, unfiltered form. While the words in the siddur are beautiful and polished and a great jumping off point for prayer, the words in our hearts are those that are offered up as a sacrifice to God. As we approach our sacred time of repentance and teshuvah (returning), Parshat Ki Tavo reminds us that perfection is unnecessary in our relationship with God. Anger, rage, understanding, sadness, and joy are all real human emotions, and when those emotions are shared in prayer, that is when we are truly offering up ourselves in prayer to God.

The best bar and bat mitzvah speeches are the ones where the student clearly owns the information, and the speech is delivered with feeling and with meaning. One of my favorite parts of the rabbinate is helping bar and bat mitzvah students with these speeches. I love the process of facilitating their discovery of the text, picking it apart to find something personally meaningful to them in even the strangest of Torah laws. When we start working on a speech, the student might not really connect to the meaning of the text on its surface. Eventually we start to talk about underlying themes and ideas, and slowly the words start to come together.

What I try to convey is that there’s a difference between what the students think I want to hear from them and their own, personal insight into the material. There’s no doubt that the more passionate we are about a cause or idea, the more likely we are to put in hard work, really living and embodying those beliefs.

The same is true with Torah. This week we read from Parshat Ki Tavo, which includes the final narrative of the Israelites preparing for their entry into the Land of Israel. We find out about the gifts the Israelites are to bring to the Beit HaMikdash and the blessings and curses bestowed on the land and on those who observe the Torah and God’s commandments. The parshah begins and ends with the requirement to recognize and give gratitude for the good that comes to us.

In chapter 26, verse 13 we are in the middle of learning about the tithing required of the Israelites. As they stood before God they were required to make a declaration of how and why they were tithing. Part of that avowal is stating, “I have not neglected any of your commandments.” The S’fat Emet interprets this to mean that the individual has not performed any of these mitzvot mindlessly, perfunctorily, or without feeling. The actions taken to perform mitzvot shouldn’t be done automatically or by rote. Each one should have intention and purpose behind it.

When we are fully invested and dedicated, that is when we’re truly giving and participating in community. In Judaism, as in our lives, we should “do it with feeling.” A bar mitzvah isn’t just about the party or turning a certain age, it is about identifying and investing in the future of your relationship with God. It’s not just about keeping tradition, but about believing you are a part of that tradition.