Ki Teitzei: How Did I Get Here?

In loving memory of my father Yitzchak Asher ben Yechezkel Shraga zl who would have celebrated his 95^th birthday yesterday

The sky could not have been a more perfect shade of blue.  With a few white clouds to add some contrast, it looked like a recreation of the wallpaper from Andy’s room in the first scene of ‘Toy Story’.

With the warm breeze bathing our faces, this was as close to paradise as I can recall.  We walked arm-in-arm, me on her right-hand side and her mother on the left, as we approached the beautiful chuppah in the middle in the field.  My eldest daughter in a stunning wedding dress looked positively radiant with a smile that was so bright we could have measured it in kilowatts!  Her handsome Chatan came forward to lift the veil over her face for the Bedeken and I blessed them both before she joined him under the Chuppah, circling her bridegroom seven times, enacting the Jewish tradition that we are so familiar with.

It's not every day that a father has the honour of officiating at his own daughter’s wedding.  With a little help from another Rabbinic friend, I did just this on Tuesday afternoon.

As I was standing there, taking in the atmosphere and looking at the beautiful and joyous young couple, my mind skipped back to the night before.  I had been watching old videos of Hadassah moving around in her cot, doing the actions whilst I was singing, “When You’re Happy and You Know It…”  She clapped her hands, stamped her feet and said a toddler’s version of, “Hello!”  This same little girl was now standing in front of me, next to the handsome man who would shortly become my son-in-law.  It was an extraordinary moment.  And then a question occurred to me.

“How did I get here?”

I wasn’t referring to the long journey we had just experienced circling the M25 and coming across more temporary traffic lights along one road than I’d seen in the last year!  I was thinking about how I was now standing there in front of my daughter under the chuppah, about to perform a ceremony as a Rabbi in front of a crowd of friends and family.  This was something that I could never have dreamed of two decades ago when I filmed her jumping up and down energetically wide eyed, with a grin populated by a few lower teeth.

It wasn’t a ‘Sunrise Sunset’ moment (to be honest, I didn’t even think of the song throughout the day).  It was so much more than that.

Have you ever taken a moment to wonder how you’ve reached the point in your life where you are right now?  All the challenges you’ve had to face throughout your life to date, just to wake up this morning and realise that you’ve made it thus far?

Parashat Ki Tetzei presents us with the highest number of mitzvot/commandments in one Parasha in the entire Torah.  Seventy-four of them to be precise.  I wonder what was going through the minds of our ancestors as they listened to Moshe listing these commandments along the banks of the Jordan River some 3,300 years ago.

A few of the mitzvot included are:

·         The way to treat a female captive.

·         Inheritance rights of firstborn sons.

·         Building a safety fence around a roof.

·         Sending off a mother bird before taking her eggs from a nest.

·         Paying workers on time.

·         Interest on loans.

·         Forbidden forms of plant and animal hybrids.

·         Dealing with the wayward and rebellious son.

·         The Levirate Marriage (known as ‘Yibbum’ in Hebrew).

·         Blotting out the name of Amalek (which is also the maftir we read on Parashat Zachot, the Shabat before Purim.)

Picture yourself listening to these commandments.  The only environment you’ve ever encountered is that of the wilderness that your parents entered when they left Egypt.  Now Moshe, who you’ve only seen as an elderly man (albeit a remarkable one at that), is talking about things that you are finding difficult to relate to.  Yet, here you are, at this crucial moment in your nation’s history, about to embark on a journey into a land that you’ve never seen, in an environment that you have next-to-no knowledge of.

How can you make sense of it all?

The ‘connect’ between spending time with my daughter as a toddler and looking at her under the chuppah is admittedly less pronounced than the example I have just provided with regard to the Israelites.  However, the idea of how to connect the journey I have taken from watching Hadassah jumping around her cot to standing before her under the Chuppah brings me to the same question that our ancestors might have had back then. 

How did I get here?

When I say ‘here’, I don’t necessarily refer to the literal location that they found themselves to be in.  More a case, ‘what was the path of my life that I followed to bring me to this point?’

On the face of it, the seemingly disparate placing of the commandments together makes very little sense.  Rabbi Sacks however, as usual, provides us with a lifeline.  He explains that the dominant theme linking the various commandments is that of relationships.

These exist between people - men and women, parents and children, employers and employees, lenders and borrowers, humans and animals and I would humbly add (when it comes to Kilayim – hybrids), man and the earth.

Our ancestors may not have understood the context of what the commandments meant but they did know how important it was to appreciate, respect and foster good relationships with each other.  They knew that the reason why they had been born in the desert and not in the Promised Land, lay in the failings of their parents to trust Gd to protect them.  Had they done so, the spies and the people who believed their lies, would not have doubted Gd’s desire to bring them to the land flowing with milk and honey.  It was a breakdown in the relationship between the Israelites, Gd, Moshe and Aharon that led to the episode of the Golden Calf.  Similarly so, with the failed mission that had led to the forty-year wanderings.

Time and again, the people misjudged Gd and Moshe’s intentions.  They had all the manna needed, but it wasn’t enough.  Their complaints regarding the lack of water following Miriam’s death led to Moshe’s hitting the rock.  After all they had been through, did they honestly believe that Gd would not provide them with water?  All they had to do was ask for it instead of pushing their leader, who had risked his life fighting for their survival, to the point that he disobeyed Gd’s command to speak to the rock.

In answering the question of, “How did we get here?”, they could have taken a moment to appreciate the journey that had led them to this point, as surprising as it may have been.

And that is what went through my mind as I stared in awe at my beaming daughter under the chuppah, flapping in the warm summer breeze.  How did my life take me from a bedroom in Edgware to a field in Essex?  I knew that as a parent, there would always be challenges and that I would (and did) follow a path that, at times, wouldn’t make much sense to me.  Along a journey that I could never have envisaged, when I began my Semicha studies nearly ten years ago, did it occur to me that one day in the not-to-distant future, I would find myself in this position?

Our lives take us in so many different directions.  I guess that’s part of what it means to live and develop as humans.  We are all taking our own journeys, following our own paths, trying to make sense of our own lives.

Sometimes, we find ourselves asking the question of, “How did I get here?’

In doing so, we can appreciate that we may not know the answer.  Decisions that we take at one stage in our lives may not make sense until another.  That we made it through to the present day is a testament to who we are, whether or not we believe we did this through a Divine Plan that gently guided us.  I happen to believe that Gd has been instrumental in bringing me to this stage in my life.  Others will have their own rationale.

How did I get here?

I don’t know, but it resulted in standing before my daughter and her Chattan and being part of a process that led them to becoming the next link in the chain of Jewish survival.  It was worth every single hill and trough that I had to negotiate to get here since that first miraculous Shabbat when Hadassah entered our lives.

Wishing the Chattan and Kallah a long, happy and healthy life together.  Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be blessed to officiate at my grandchild’s chuppah too!

Shavuah Tov.