Parshas Behar-Bechukosai 5781
In the summer of 2012, a seven year old girl named Sierra Jane Downing from Colorado came back from a camping trip with her parents and began to take ill. When her fever reached 107 degrees and she began to suffer from a seizure, her parents rushed her to the hospital. Initially baffled, her doctors soon pronounced a diagnosis that, in modern times, has become extremely rare: bubonic plague. This is the gruesome disease that, in the middle of the 14th century, wiped out one-third of the entire population of Europe , a pandemic that came to be ominously known as the Black Death. Fortunately for Sierra Jane, Colorado in the modern era is a far cry from Medieval Europe. She was treated with a rather pedestrian regimen of antibiotics and was back home and in good health in a matter of days.
In its presentation of the Tochacha, Parshas Bechukosai includes a description of plague-like maladies that may well be visited upon the Jewish People, should they veer from properly keeping the Torah. Illness, suffering, and death are all on the docket. Like the Black Death, only worse. Horrors of cataclysmic proportions that extend for nearly forty pesukim.
And what if we’re good? What if we serve Hashem the way we should, the way He expects us to? An equally effusive and lengthy description of endless blessings would not be an unreasonable expectation. Chazal assure us, after all, that מרובה מדת הטוב ממדת הפרענות על אחת מחמש מאות, the measure of good that Hashem provides is 500 times greater than the measure of punishment He metes out (Tosefta Sotah).
And yet we find no such description. In its place, a mere 13 pesukim are devoted to outlining the brachos that Hashem will bestow upon Klal Yisrael for keeping the Torah, a mere fraction of those used to convey the curses that will befall them for defying it. Why is more ink needed to articulate Hashem’s wrath than His love? Why does the middas haTov—the measure of good— appear to fall woefully behind that of the middas haPur’anus—the measure of punishment?
Let’s turn back to Sierra Jane Downing. If the day before that fateful hike we would have asked her how she was feeling, what would she have responded? I’d bet we’d have gotten little more than a pat, “Fine.” And why nothing more sensational? Because she would likely have responded to the inquiry like most human beings: compare how she actually felt to her expectations for how she ought to feel, and assess that the two were essentially par. “Fine.” Nothing more, nothing less.
Suppose we could have posed that same question just a day after she came home from the hospital. In all likelihood, that “Fine” would have transformed into something far more extravagant. Why? Because the disease she contracted and the resulting brush with death and hospitalization would have changed her expectations.
If she’d done a little googling while stuck in her hospital bed, perhaps she’d have come across a full list of gut-wrenching symptoms usually associated with an untreated case of bubonic plague, including, among other things, gut-wrenching itself. She would have appreciated just how close she came to suffering horrible muscle cramps, chills, boils, and gangrene. She’d have recognized how likely the disease would prove fatal if not swiftly treated. And she’d feel positively thrilled that she had managed to avoid such horrors.
Perhaps the word itself would remain the same, but feeling “fine” would now have completely new meaning and import. “Fine,” would be an ecstatic state of being. “Fine” would make her swell with gratitude. What an utter blessing it is to simply be “fine.”
True, the Torah takes far more time in describing the curses than the blessings. But it is the curses themselves that help to accentuate the true depth of the blessings. Ultimately, the brachos may well result in little more than being “fine,” a state in which our most basic expectations for health, prosperity, and life in general are simply met. But the curses help see through the veil created by those expectations into the calamitous reality that could so easily have been: A life that was just one diseased flea-bite away from being ravaged by plague.
Undoubtedly, the Tochacha is meant to be startling, even frightening. But it need not be read on that wavelength alone. Simultaneously, we can see the Tochacha as a register not only of debilitating curses, but spectacular blessings. The Tochacha reminds us of the blessing of Hashem’s providence by clueing us in to all the trouble we are spared when He watches over us. Even basic, ordinary living is actually the manifestation of prodigious blessing, having been saved catastrophic pain and suffering.
A plain old PB&J may not be thrilling, but sure beats famine and starvation (26:19). An uneventful day at home is far better than being cast into exile (26:33) Going about the daily grind sure beats being gripped by fear, depression, and paranoia (26:36). Being “fine” is actually a life blessed.
With Shavuos around the corner, it’s a good time to take stock and remember where we were a year ago. No all night learning. No minyanim. No extended family. No get togethers. Perhaps there is nothing particularly scintillating about this upcoming Shavuos that sets it apart from other Yamim Tovim we’ve enjoyed most years of our lives. But last year’s Shavuos should present an opportunity for reconsidering the average and ordinary. Even if this coming Yom Tov is simply “fine”, let’s be mindful of what an immense blessing that truly is.