The Other List
In about two weeks we stand in judgment, and by now many of us have some version of a list going — what we did wrong this year… what we keep doing wrong… what we resolve to fix.
Hardly anybody is making a second list – what went right… what we have to be thankful for. We file that under “nice,” if there’s time. But the Torah files it under something considerably more important. Why did all the curses of the Tochachah come? “Tachas asher lo avadeta es Hashem Elokecha b’simchah uv’tuv leivav meirov kol — because you did not serve Hashem your G-d with joy and gladness of heart, out of an abundance of everything” (Devarim 28:47).
Were there mistakes, transgressions, failures in keeping the mitzvos? Yes. But what’s the reason for the terrible suffering described in the parsha (which some see as a prophecy for the Holocaust)? Because of the failure to be b’simchah when we had it good — meirov kol. We had everything. It was all in front of us every day, and it stopped registering.
What the Judgment Is About
Rav Avigdor Miller (Rav Avigdor Miller on Teshuvah and Yamim Nora’im) puts the whole thing in perspective. On Rosh Hashanah, how can you ask for another year of life, a good year filled with berachah, if you’re not thankful for the past year? “We had an entire year, a good year, and our job is to testify that it was good,” he says. “And to testify now before the next year begins.”
Then he adds: “And in case you feel it wasn’t a good year, think of the almost 365 breakfasts you ate this year. Did you enjoy breakfast? Don’t tell me you didn’t. If you didn’t, you need a course in living. Everybody should enjoy breakfast. And 365 times last year you ate supper. And most of us ate 365 lunches. Not to mention what you did between meals. Look back and enjoy all those occasions when you ate, all the occasions when you slept.
“There are a lot of people who can’t sleep. Most of us slept 365 nights. I don’t think you were up in mishmarim all night. I think you were sleeping almost every night. Baruch Hashem, you can walk. You can breathe. You’re well. Baruch Hashem! How much you have to thank Hashem!
“All you have to do is open your eyes and be a samei’ach b’chelko, and you’ll become wealthy. If you work at being samei’ach b’chelko, and realize how fortunate you are, you’ll be a happy person your entire life. Never did it before? You only did it half-heartedly? Start now. It’s one of the important things to think about – especially on the last days of the year.”
Still Reverberating
Rav Miller tells us not only to go back over the past year but our entire lives. Hashem blessed us many years ago — meirov kol — and those blessings are still impacting our lives now.
Remember when you got that job that kicked off your career? Remember when you met your spouse? Don’t ignore a chesed Hashem did for you years ago just because you’ve gotten used to living with the results. Think about it now, relive the feeling, and thank Hashem with sincerity.
And think about all the potential problems you avoided because Hashem protected you. Maybe you were young and riding your bike when a car zoomed around the corner and almost hit you, r”l. Did you thank Hashem then? Do you thank Him now? Or perhaps you went to the doctor dreading a diagnosis and it turned out to be nothing. That relief was a gift too. And its effects are still reverberating.
We arrive at Rosh Hashanah braced to account for what we did wrong. Rav Miller tells us to also make an account of what we were given and never acknowledged. Or never acknowledged enough.
He Didn’t Wait for the Meeting
In the autumn of 1938, in the weeks after Kristallnacht, a twenty-six-year-old rabbi in London went to the leaders of Agudath Israel to ask what could be done. By the time they had finished weighing an approach, he was on a train to Vienna.
His name was Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schonfeld.
He and a Vienna communal leader, Julius Steinfeld, assembled a transport of close to three hundred children. The British government wanted a guarantee before it would let them in, and Rabbi Schonfeld gave it himself — committing to children he had no funds yet to support. The established relief committees called him irresponsible.
He not only brought out those three hundred but he didn’t consider the job finished when they landed. Kosher homes. Jewish schools. Work. A Jewish child pulled out of Europe and put down where he would lose everything he was had only been half-saved.
In 1946 he had a relief worker’s uniform made — shoulder flashes and a cap bearing the Ten Commandments — so he could move through occupied Europe with the standing of a relief official, and went looking for the children who were left. He found them in convents and in Christian foster homes, and paid whatever he had to pay to get them back.
We Are Those Children
Estimates vary, but over the years he helped save thousands of people — children, adults, rabbanim. They married and had children, and those children had children, and a great many of them are in shul this Shabbos. Britain got around to giving Rabbi Schonfeld its “Hero of the Holocaust” award in 2013 — twenty-nine years after he died, and long after there was anybody left to say it to.
But the point is broader. A five-year-old lifted onto a train in Vienna has no idea whose name is on his papers. He grows up, marries, raises a frum family, makes weddings — and the whole structure of his life stands on a signature he never saw.
Every one of us is that child.
You did not choose the life circumstances you were born into – your parents, your community, your era. Somebody paid for a chinuch you don’t remember getting. Somebody’s mesirus nefesh two or three generations back is probably the reason most of us know anything about keeping the Torah at all — and you probably couldn’t tell me his name.
None of us is ungrateful — we just never saw the signature.
A Basket and a Speech
The parsha opens with a farmer who walks into his field, sees the first fig begin to ripen, ties a reed around it to mark it, carries it up to Yerushalayim and hands the basket to a kohen. And then he has to express thanks.
And it’s not a general thank you. He goes back to the origins and recites words that encompass the entire blessing. “Arami oved avi — an Aramean sought to destroy my father” (Devarim 26:5), and down to Mitzrayim, and they made it bitter for us, and we cried out, and He heard us, and He brought us here. And here is the fruit of the ground that You gave me.
Expressing gratitude to Hashem isn’t just a nice custom. Rabbeinu Yonah says it’s a mitzvas asei, a positive commandment (Sha’arei Teshuvah 3:17). “V’zacharta es kol haderech — and you shall remember the whole way” that Hashem led you (Devarim 8:2). And don’t stop at what happened back then. Look back at the whole journey of your life and thank Hashem. Keep thanking until you come to the year that just passed. It’s all part of the journey of life.
Five Minutes and a Head Taller
Everybody preparing for Rosh Hashanah makes resolutions about what has to change. But what about that great backlog of gratitude we must repay before we ask what we want for the coming year? Rav Miller says, “To be an asker for the future, you must be a great appreciator of the past.”
Too busy to think about the past? Find five minutes. If you want to be a real lamdan, find ten minutes. Do that, Rav Miller says, and you are a head taller than everyone around.
This article is dedicated l’aliyas nishmas my father, Chaim Binyamin ben Yaakov Reuven, on his yahrzeit.
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