Ki Savo 5786 - Juxtaposing the Blessings We Have to the Hardships That We Have Endured

Salvo um starts with bikurim and bikurim means we bring the first fruits and also there is a whole to recite and so on and so forth. Now [clears throat] the the the there's a certain ju just position over here where a person bringing bikurim is certain peak I've worked very hard I've invested myself and crops and things like that and seeds and finally I have before me something that is um a fruit and it's there and way be and and it's I've just had my first harvest. The nusak of the recital that we say is all about the gul mit. As a matter of fact, not only is it all about the mitim, the hag is is made out of this. the the core of the god that takes these pukim and brings out in each and every pik the dras the nuances of what is um of of what happened in mit and how bad it was we called out and so on. So Makaya remarks over here about why it is that at this high point we we roll back all the way again to the to the to the to the gulus of Mits. So the says the reason the purpose of reciting this para A person needs to reflect back at a high point the low point of his life. >> [clears throat] >> um on a day of good be in a good spirits and the and see a bad day or something like that. It's very hard to understand what it means in context says you should be able to see the bad the bad day. Why? What's the point of it? Why is it like that explains let's discuss this point and uh and understand what he's saying. It's a point that's relevant to a lot of uh of our ongoing a person when we look at things we look at things [clears throat] in a certain context and contrast. So for instance, a person that walks into a house that is very nicely done and painted so forth. He's impressed, you know, it's very nice. Yeah, it's nice. It's good. A person who has been to a house where he saw it bare walls, not painted, and then he walks in and he sees it at some point painted and beautiful. then the person um realizes what he sees if the context if we have no context. So walk into a house that's painted and nicely you know done our context is other homes that are similly painted and this might be a bit nicer which is very nice but that's it. It's only when I'm able to see something on a context that I really appreciate it. So, it's one of the reasons why you put a painting up against a background that's marketkedly different. You'll have a frame that is very different and set into the frame, the eye perceives what's there in ways that are much more appreciated. Um [clears throat] the the zora that there is no light but the one that comes from darkness. When you walk and it's light outside, it's light and someone says it's light. Yeah, it's light. But when when you've when it's dark and then you see the sun rise and everything lights up is a very different appreciation understanding of it. It it's it's it's more than just appreciating it. It means we actually understand on the background of what it is. So let's take a simple example. A person who's healthy and good and he says I should I need to thank for every breath I take and every beat in my heart. Okay. You know yeah we we definitely subscribe to that. But we don't have it's hard to say that that statement has a very powerful impact on us. But imagine a person, God forbid, suffers from an asthma and he's gasping for every breath and gasping and gasping and gasping and finally at some point he's able to breathe again. The person appreciates every breath that he can take. It's a whole different world of appreciation. So being able to appreciate um what a person is doing is only possible if it comes on some other background. It's one of the reasons why the world does not appreciate what a was giving because we don't really contrast it. We don't say well we we we should have had nothing. We shouldn't be alive but probably gave us life. No, we're alive and good. And Hashem sometimes nice to us, less nice to us. But I I I don't see my existence as being the result of him, so to speak. That's why it's such a um it's so critical that we're able to juxtapose it. It's coming unfortunately less and less common because war survivors, Holocaust survivors are dying and they barely left. But it was common many times with family gettogethers with a survivor where a survivor would give a context and say, you know, I came a broken bad person, no family, nothing whatsoever, a dollar in my pocket and look, I have a hundred descendants and each and everyone is doing wonderfully well. It it it it it it it brings out and appreciates everything. The the the darkness and the lack is what gives the existence and some meaning. I want to give a sort of a uh something similar in a very different frame. Um the the the bab is called came from a place of darkness. Your shi is from source light. If you learn your shami, your shami does not have many havas. Doesn't go through a lot of back and forth. It just basically gets to the point. Ironically, it makes it a lot more obscure for us because it's hard to tell what you mean when you don't understand what you don't mean. But then in the bi, it's full of havin that get rejected. But we now we understand what can't be and therefore why what is is. So the here is telling us that bikurim would never be appreciated unless we're able to contrast it with what we don't have. The fact that person come to his field and the stuff beginning to grow, it's nice. It's good. We can say thank you dear God, but I don't really get it. But when I stand there with with the with the with with that fruit and I say I was a slave in Mitraim completely sunk into their country having nothing of myself, no land, no product, no goods, nothing. This is who I am without and now that has taken me this is what I have. I have a real appreciation for what it is I'm bringing here. So bringing bikurim and reciting the the the whole um being in mitim and so on is really a model for us whenever we look to thank in ding whatever we need to see ourselves in the situation of not having in the situation of how it was when I didn't have and keep those keep that as a background ground for what we do have. Um the it's the the only way to appreciate what we do have is by putting in the context of what we don't and what we didn't