My association with this week’s Parashat Ki Tavo has always centered on the “wandering Aramean”—arami oved avi—about whom I have written elsewhere. The phrase appears in the declaration that accompanies the first fruits: ve-hayah ki tavo el-ha-aretz—“When you enter the land.” After all our wandering, we finally arrive in the Promised Land. We are told to remember where we came from and how we got here: “The Lord brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut. 26:5–10).

But the gift of the land comes with a condition. We are expected to behave morally. The idyllic promise of arriving in the land is followed, toward the end of the parasha, by an extraordinary catalogue of blessings and curses.

This year, as we approach the end of Elul, I find myself returning to that contrast—not simply as a biblical theme, but as a personal and national one.

My role model for dealing with adversity was my life partner, Rabbi Michael Graetz—Ramag. He had an extraordinary ability to see the glass as half full, even when circumstances gave him every reason to see it as empty.

For almost ten years, he struggled with basal cell carcinoma (BCC). When people expressed concern, he would joke that, “If you have to have cancer, that’s the one you should get.” Once he decided to undergo treatment, he owned the decision. He read an article about the treatment written by his oncologist and began quoting it. He told everyone how fortunate he was to have this particular doctor and how good the treatment was. The man who had resisted treatment now became its greatest advocate.

That transformation has stayed with me. Optimism does not magically eliminate suffering; rather, the manner in which we respond to hardship alters the nature of the experience itself. Mind over matter. Blessings over curses.........

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