Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (the one we “celebrated” his passing day just a week ago) once sent his son, Rabbi Elazar, to a couple of distinguished sages for a blessing.
The sages gave him a very strange “blessing”: “May it be the will of G-d that you sow and not reap. That you bring in [merchandise] and not let out [sell it], and that you invest and not have a return. That your house be destroyed and your inn settled. That your table be confused and you should not see a new year.” (!!)
Rabbi Elazar returned to his father shocked: “Not only did they not bless me, he exclaimed, “they cursed me!” “What did they tell you?” asked Rabbi Shimon. After Rabbi Elazar repeated their words, Rabbi Shimon reassured him: “All their words are really blessings!”
And he explained: ‘Sow and not reap’ means that you will have children who will not die in your lifetime. ‘Bring in and not let out’ means that you will bring in daughters-in-law [your children will marry] and your sons who married them will not die in their lifetime. ‘Invest and not have a return’ means that your daughters will marry and their husbands will not die, resulting in your daughters having to return home. ‘Your house be destroyed and your inn settled’ means that your grave (which is called a ‘house’) will not come to use and you will live long in this world which is compared to an inn. ‘Your table be confused’ with many sons and daughters. And ‘you should not see a new year’– your wife will not die and you will therefore not have to ‘see a new year,’ i.e. remarry and spend the ‘first year’ with a new wife.”
This week we read the Torah portion of Bechukatai, which contains 49 of these very special “blessings” but in disguise. On an ostensible level–the conscious, revealed dimension–they appear as curses. On this level they too serve a “blessed” purpose to attack the “negative” forces of existence. No one would consider it a curse when white blood cells mercilessly destroy harmful bacteria in order to protect the body from infection.
But in an even deeper dimension–in the unconscious, hidden dimension–the inner workings of these apparent “curses” are nothing but profound blessings, so profound that they can only be expressed in a concealed and disguised fashion. They are actually deeper blessings that the ones we can openly recognize!
In fact, everything that happens in our life is a blessing, sometimes we can see it in an explicit manner and sometimes it appears to look like the exact opposite of a blessing, for the time being.
Wishing you a truly blessed Shabbat and looking forward to celebrating with you the holiday of Shavuot.
Rabbi Shlomi Tabib
Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash
