Always Look for the Good

Dear families,

 

Always Look for the Good

 

At our K-12 assembly this week, I welcomed the students by sharing insights from Parshat Re’eh. I explained that, just as Moshe addressed Am Yisrael in their fortieth year in the desert, on the threshold of entering Eretz Yisrael, they were faced with a significant choice – a path to follow. The message is that each of us has the power to choose our direction, just as they did.  Each of us gets to choose the type of school year we want to have.

 

We get to choose.  We get to choose how to be, how to react, how to show up to school, how to see the good, or how to only focus on the negatives.  But we get to choose.

 

An email from DAT parent Tova Altmann really inspired me this week.  She writes:

 

Dear Abba,

 

I wanted to share some reflections from one of the most impactful events we’ve ever attended. Chabad South Metro Denver hosted Or Levy, who endured 491 days of captivity, starvation, and torture at the hands of Hamas after losing his beloved wife Einav on October 7. Accompanied by his brother and his beautiful son Almog, he has been traveling and courageously sharing his story of light emerging from darkness.

 

One of the most powerful takeaways was a mantra he carried with him, a gift from Hersh Goldberg-Polin who, in the depths of despair, reminded him of Viktor Frankl’s words: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

 

We were so proud of our children, who created heartfelt cards for Or, celebrating him as a true “Superman” and expressing love and pride for Am Yisrael. I’m sharing a picture from the evening with the hope that it will inspire you and Denver Academy of Torah as much as it inspired us.

 

To give some background about who Hersh Goldberg-Polin was quoting, Viktor Frankl (1905-1977) was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor.  Frankl’s autobiographical Man’s Search for Meaning is based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.

 

Two of his most famous quotes, on which much of his therapeutic work is based on, are:

 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

 

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

 

Choosing how to respond is one thing.  Choosing how to see the world, with all of its hardness and brutality, is a whole other thing, and captured in the parsha – it’s hiding in plain sight with the word Re’eh, See!

 

A famous Ba’al Shem Tov story teaches it better than I can: 

 

A simple villager once came to the Baal Shem Tov and complained:

 

“Rebbe, I look at my life and all I see is hardship — poverty, struggles with my farm, and constant worries. Where is the blessing that the Torah promises?”

 

The Baal Shem Tov handed him an old pair of eyeglasses.

 

“Put these on,” he instructed.

 

The villager looked around the room — and suddenly everything seemed filled with light. The broken chair looked beautiful, the cracked walls glowed with warmth, even the faces of poor peasants in the village sparkled with joy.

 

The villager was amazed. “Rebbe, what kind of magic is this?”

 

The Baal Shem Tov smiled:

 

“These are not ordinary glasses. They remind you to see the world the way Hashem sees it — through eyes of blessing. In Parshat Re’eh, the Torah doesn’t say ‘I give you blessings and curses.’ It says Re’eh — ‘See!’ The choice of blessing or curse begins with how we choose to look at the world. If you train yourself to see blessing, you will find it everywhere. If you only look for curses, you will see them too. The world reflects the eyes with which you see it.”

 

The villager left with a new perspective: the “glasses” were not physical, but a lesson to always look for the good, the spark of blessing hidden in every moment.

 

This story ties beautifully into the parsha’s core message: Hashem places both blessing and curse before us, but our vision – how we choose to see and respond – determines which reality we live.

 

Shabbat Shalom u’mevorach,

 

Mar Abba