Driving in Reverse
If you will follow My decrees and observe my mitzvos and perform them…[2]
A midrash[3] sees this pasuk as asking us to choose a path after doing some deliberation. It invokes a line in Tehillim:[4]“I considered my ways, and I turned my feet again to your testimonies.” What did he consider? Our pasuk. It introduces a section of berachos, which begins with an aleph, and ends with a tav.[5] In other words, the entire alphabet. The rewards for living in accordance with Hashem’s dictates are rich and diverse. Not so the curses for non-compliance. They start with a vav, and end with a heh.[6] Those letters are neighbors, emphasizing that the many curses in the tochecha section really occupy a narrow band of misfortunes.
Moreover, vav appears in the alphabet after heh, not before it. The inversion suggests that not only are the kelalos limited, but they can be reversed. Listening to Hashem does not merely rid us of the curses that lurk in the background. It subjects them to a complete makeover. The curses can change into blessings. Indeed, says the midrash, they will – so long as “you follow my decrees.”
Know this. The reversal of the curses into their opposite is not an arbitrary phenomenon. It is midah keneged midah/measure for measure. A devoted Jew turns all of the physical in his life into kedushah and yir’as Shomayim. Just as he transforms the material into its opposite, Hashem turns the curses into blessings.
This is related to another important reversal. We are taught[7] that tzadikim can change midas ha-din into midas ha-rachamim. Because giving nachas to HKBH is the central concern in their lives, they constantly change gashmiyus into ruchniyus. Once again, midah keneged midah, Hashem changes din into rachamim.
We can trace this back to Yaakov Avinu. When Yaakov wrestled through the night with Esav’s malach – none other than Soton/Sama’el himself – the break of dawn signaled that he had prevailed. So would his descendants prevail over the dark forces of history that would attempt to quash them and subjugate them.
Yet Yaakov was not satisfied with this assurance. Yaakov told the malach that he would not let go until this dark figure would give him a berachah! Making it intact to history’s finish line would not satisfy Yaakov’s yearnings to fulfil the mission of Jewish history. The multiple curses in Soton’s playbook would have to turn into berachos; midas ha-din would have to pivot to midas ha-rachamim.
Tosafos[8] explain a puzzling aspect of our calendar. The parshios Nitzavim and Vayelech combined amount to a mere seventy pesukim – significantly shorter than most weekly readings. Yet, we split them between two weeks, whenever there are two Shabbosos between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkos. Wouldn’t it make more sense to separate Matos from Masei – each of which is sizeable – rather than combine them in the same year?
Tosafos answer that we need to sandwich in a parsha without any reference to Hashem’s kelalos. At the end of Ki Savo, we read the long tochecha/rebuke section, containing 98 curses. We want to separate that Shabbos from Rosh Hashanah with a Shabbos that makes no mention of kelalos.
But why the concern? The gemara explicitly states that Ezra established the Torah-reading calendar in a way that the tochecha would be read before Rosh Hashanah, indicating that the old year should end along with its curses, and a new one could usher in new berachos. There should be no cushion of a curse-free week necessary in between. It should be sufficient that all of the kelalos should be read within the old year.
The message may be that we want and pray for far more than the fizzling out of all the old kelalos. We want there to be a next step, one in which the curses themselves are turned into berachos. The Shabbos separating Ki Savo before, and Rosh Hashanah after, represents that step.
- Adapted from Be’er Moshe, by the Ozherover Rebbe zt”l ↑
- Vayikra 26:3 ↑
- Vayikra Rabbah 35:1 ↑
- Tehillim 119:59 ↑
- Vayikra 26:13 ↑
- Devarim 28:15 – Devarim 28:68 ↑
- Bereishis Rabbah 33:3 ↑
- Megillah 31b s.v. kellalos ↑
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Date: May 22, 2025
