Ki Tavoh -74 Being grateful is not easy

Our portion-parasha   Ki Tavo starts of the mitzvah – commandment to dedicate the first fruits of our labors to God by bringing them to the Beit Ha'mikdash – Temple in Jerusalem – Deuteronomy/ Devarim 26:1-11. . The bringing of the ' Bikkurim' took place mainly from Shavuot to Succot and was accompanied by a moving declaration of gratitude to God for ' redeeming us   from the hardships of Laban and Egypt and bringing us to the land of Israel. '

Being grateful is a challenge as we tend to ascribe success to our own doing and forget God's crucial support, without which we could not succeed.  We also tend to forget people who have helped us along the way. From this mitzvah we learn to be grateful to God and express gratitude to all those who have helped us when we reflect and speak about the milestones we have reached and success we have achieved.

But more challenging is when we are faced with a crop that has 'failed'. Even from the little that there is, we have to take and dedicate our 'Bikkurim' – the first fruits. Because  the Mishnah says -  Bikkurim don't have a ' sh'iur' , a minimum quantity,  you have to dedicate something .  Even if the fruits of our labors are miserable, we have to make our declaration and as the verse states – rejoice with all the goodness that Hashem, your God, has given you and your household together with the poor of your community.   וְשָׂמַחְתָּ בְכָל-הַטּוֹב, אֲשֶׁר נָתַן-לְךָ ה'    .Celebrating and being grateful for success and sharing your success with others is not so challenging as the celebrating and being grateful for a miserable crop yield. Also the declaration is only said if the first fruits are brought between Shavuot and Succot and not after Succot. This is because the period after Succot, is  after the harvest has been gathered and therefore  is not called a time for rejoicing.

The verse says that we should rejoice and be glad with ALL the goodness that Hashem, your God has given you.  And this means searching within ourselves and discovering  what we can be grateful about. Being grateful does not depend on something ' external to us ' or being the receptacles of someone else's goodness. It is a characteristic, it is a need within us to feel grateful and express it.  We are grateful for life, our relationship with God, the Torah  and the opportunities to do good and  mitzvoth. We are not only grateful for the first fruit but more so for the opportunity to perform the mitzvah-commandment  of ' Bikkurim ', to dedicate the first fruits of our labors to God, in fact to dedicate our labor to God. In our declaration of gratitude to God, we do not thank God for the fruit, but we thank God for gift of  the land. The bringing of the fruit is just a way we express our gratitude for having a holy home close to God. . And the best time are the festivals of Shavuot until the end of Succot , a season full of opportunities to make a contribution and do mitzvoth

As parents and teachers we can model being   people who are happy, grateful and always see the glass half full. When kids don't meet our expectations or make mistakes, our disappointment, or even anger can get in the way of how we view the whole  child. Suddenly we are no longer grateful for the gift of this child , we don't see the whole picture – a child with wonderful attributes who has now made a mistake. When kids make mistakes or experience failure we can still see the positive and say they are doing their best as the CPS - collaborative solving mantra tells us ' children do well if they can . We don't need to be critical , just collaborate with them to solve the problem. Mistakes and failure are windows for new opportunities for growth and improvement. Being grateful is not just  being happy with what we have been given, but being grateful for opportunities to make a contribution and grow despite the challenges we face.

Va'etchanan 73 Honoring Parents and the Sabbath

The weekly Bible-Torah reading from the book of Deuteronomy- Devarim  is Va'etchanan . Here Moses continues with his last sermon to the children of Israel and begins a discussion and review of many of  God's laws. He begins with a review of the 10 commandments. 

Most of the textual differences between the 10 commandments received on Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus and the account here in Deuteronomy are  due to Moses wanting to emphasize and teach certain lessons.  The Mesach Hachmah is his commentary notes that in the second set of the 10 commandments  - the words '  as God commanded ' are added to the 4^th commandment  -  Keeping and honoring  the Sabbath  and the 5^th commandment – honoring parents. These words ' as God commanded ' do not appear in the   first set of the 10 commandments.

The Mesach Hachmah explains that there are good reasons for keeping and thereby honoring the Sabbath. People work hard all week and the Sabbath is a welcome day of rest , an opportunity to desist from physical  creativity  and focus on connecting with God and spend time studying his Torah and its laws. In the desert – people did not have to work , they received ' manna' from heaven and their lives were very spiritual connecting with God and studying Torah all the time. There was no extrinsic need for a Sabbath in the desert.

The same was true for the commandment of ' Honoring Parents. The obligation to honor parents is from our feelings of gratitude to them for attending to our needs and raising us. In the desert , parents did not need to work for a living, in a miraculous way kids clothes grew on them as they aged, and the environment was very spiritual and providing. There was really very little reason to express gratitude to parents.

Moses is teaching , that the reason for keeping and honoring the Sabbath , and also honoring parents is not because of extrinsic reasons such as social benefits or gratitude to parents but should be done out of our obligation to fulfill God's commandments.

So what does God want from us here. We learned in the Ethics of our fathers – Pirkei Avot  - who is honored ? He , who honors others. ' Who is honored does not depend on something extrinsic – the number of people who honor a person , but a person having the intrinsic  trait or characteristic of being a person who honors others. So God does not want that we should keep and honor the Sabbath because of social and spiritual reasons , but we should  become  the type of  person who gives honor to the Sabbath by keeping the Sabbath. God does not want us to honor parents because of an extrinsic reason like gratitude but become  the type of person who has the ' midah' – characteristic of ' honoring parents.'

If we are saying that we are to honor parents and keep the Sabbath because of its inherent value – the right thing to do ,  so why does the Bible- Torah attach a reward for doing this commandment – Honor your father and your mother as ' Hashem ' your God has commanded you so that your days will be lengthened and it will be good for you Upon the land that 'Hashem ' your God gives to you.

The Torah is telling us that the good deed- mitvah of honoring parents has its reward in the world to come and a person will enjoy the ' fruits of his positive actions ' in this world. This means that  God will support  him in his efforts to do more positive things and impact on peoples' lives in this world and in the world to come he will be in a position to enjoy the spirituality of the next world.

Traditional ' rewards and punishments ' encourage a child to ask ' what's in it for me and gets in the way of the child asking – 'what kind of person do I want to be' . The reward that the Bible talks about is merely , for example  -honoring parents – as a   consequence of us making efforts to lengthen their lives and improve the quality of their parents  lives ,God offers us support to continue being the persons we want to be.