Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings.
Deuteronomy 28:5
This is the refrigerator magnet that I bought at the Museum of the Jewish people this summer in Tel Aviv. It is not just any fridge magnet, it is a reproduction from the Codex Sassoon, the earliest most complete edition of the Hebrew Bible. This refrigerator magnet reproduces the script in the Codex that is over 1,100 years old. The Codex was bought for almost 38 million dollars at an auction at Sotheby’s and donated to the Anu – Museum of the Jewish People’s collection so it would be open and accessible to the Jewish people.
How many lessons can we learn from a fridge magnet?
Lesson One: Count your Blessings
Deuteronomy 28 contains 14 verses of blessings that can roughly be divided into different categories: universal blessings, practical blessings, blessings for fertility and blessings for abundance. In the words of the great Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin
If you’re worried and you can’t sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep
And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings
How do I count the number of blessings in Ki Tavo? Inside these 14 verses in Deuteronomy are individual blessings, but while my magnet is one verse, it is actually two blessings, so my calculation is that there are 30 individual blessings inside the 14 verses. This leads me to the second lesson:
Lesson Two: Blessings are not always straightforward
The Codex Sassoon was a gift, but to protect the gift there needed to be new layers of safety and security that had never before been necessary.
Blessings are not necessarily gifts, but rather part of a covenantal relationship with mutual responsibility and interdependence. The Codex Sassoon demonstrates this perfectly, as receiving the blessing entailed a series of activities that included flying in the secured cockpit of an El Al plane in a specially designed case, new fire safety measures and commitments to education. The Codex arrived on Thursday October 5, 2023. Its display was postponed until 601 days later on Shavuot 2025.
Lesson Three: Blessings are about perspective
The magnet is a snapshot of a larger folio of an ancient document and reminds me that each individual blessing is only part of a bigger picture. In real life, whether something is a blessing or a curse is often about how we look at it, it is about our perspective.
In Deuteronomy 27:11-14 Moses charges the people to stand upon two mounts upon crossing the River Jordan, half of the tribes on one mount to bless the people and half of the tribes on a second mount to curse the people.
Rashi explains the procedure:
Six tribes ascended the top of Mount Gerizim and the other six the top of Mount Ebal, the priests, the Levites and the Ark remaining below in the midst (i.e. in the valley between). The Levites turned their faces towards Mount Gerizim and began to recite the blessing: “Blessed be the man that does not make any graven or molten image etc.”, and both these and those (the tribes on Mount Gerizim and those on Mount Ebal) answered “Amen”! Then they turned their faces towards Mount Ebal and began to recite the curse, saying: “Cursed be the man who maketh any graven [or molten image]” (cf. Rashi on Deuteronomy 11:29).
Immediately, one begins to wonder about the division of tribes and what this meant? Were some tribes blessed and others cursed? Were some tribes meant to deliver blessings and others receive blessings? From Mount Gerizim Joseph is looking over at Zebulun on Mount Ebal. From Mount Ebal Zebulun is looking at Joseph on Mount Gerizim. This is confusing but it embodies the fundamental importance of perspective, where we are standing versus where we are gazing.
Another shift in perspective is suggested by Rav Kook as fundamental to the essence of encountering Torah:
When we think about a Torah scroll, we usually only consider the letters themselves, written in black ink. Yet, the Talmud (Menachot 29a) rules that every letter in a Torah scroll must be completely surrounded by parchment. This requirement is called mukaf gevil. In other words, the white parchment around the letters is an integral part of the Torah; without it, the Torah scroll is disqualified. In fact, the white space is a higher form of Torah. It is analogous to the white fire of Sinai — a sublime, hidden Torah that cannot be read in the usual manner.
The mountains can be seen as the black letters of the Torah, surrounded by white spaces of possibility to consider different perspectives and positions. Just as the magnet is only part of the picture of the Codex Sassoon.
Black fire and white fire as a concept enables us to think of the space between the mountains as the quintessential Jewish space. As it is written in Tosefta Chagigah 2:2
What is this similar to? To [a street] that passes between two paths, one of fire, and one of snow. If he leans one way, he will be burnt [by the fire]. If he leans the other way, he will be burnt by the snow. A man must walk in the middle and not lean to or fro.
The sublime space is the space between and around Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim the middle path.
But, even if we count blessings, complicate blessings, and change our perspective on blessings, we have to recognise that when we accept blessings we acknowledge their opposite: curses.
Progressive theology has always wrestled with the idea of a punishing god, a struggle which reverberates across our liturgy and particularly in the Yotzeir Or:
Baruch attah Adonai, eloheinu Melech ha-olam, yotseir or uvorei choschech oseh shalom uvorei et ha-kol.
Blessed are you our living God, Sovereign of the universe who forms light yet creates darkness, who makes peace yet creates all.
Finding a place to reflect on blessings and curses in the white fire between the mountains is a huge gift from a little refrigerator magnet.
Jennifer Verson, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.