“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.” (Deut. 11:26)
When the Torah commands us to see and not just to hear, we understand that we are talking about more than cognitive understanding. We are talking about an experience shared by the soul as well.
In our world there are so many blessings and, sadly, so many curses — things we are able to understand and many that are hidden from us. But beyond that hiddenness is the meaning, faith itself.
During these difficult days, let us take a good look at the world, which contains both blessing and curse, and let us choose hope. Hope that is not hollow optimism, an “everything will work out OK” approach, or hollow faith that posits that one deserves redemption irrespective of one’s actions. Hope is something different from that. On the verse “I wait for Your deliverance, O LORD” (Gen. 48:19), Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto teaches that hope is like a string of dots … a string of connected activities that correct or repair the world and create hope, which is well grounded in thought—thought about what can be fixed in our world, which we will know only if we strive toward what appears unattainable. That’s how the State of Israel came into being, and that is how it will rise again. May the LORD grant God’s people strength; may the LORD bless God’s people with peace.
