Ki Teitzei

The parsha ends on a hard note. "Remember what Amalek did to you" - זָכ֕וֹר - and a few verses later, "do not forget," לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח. He caught you עָיֵ֣ף וְיָגֵ֑עַ, "famished and weary," and cut down the stragglers at the back of the line.

But why would that need commanding? An ambush like that scars a person for life on its own.

The Mei HaShiloach says something quietly devastating (referencing the Zohar on Kohelet 10:1): כַּאֲשֶׁר יוּרְגַּל הָאָדָם בִּמְנוּחָה לֹא יַרְגִּישׁ טַעַם, "once a person grows accustomed to rest, he no longer feels its taste." The first breath of relief after years of being crushed is overwhelming. And then you get used to it. When everything arrives on time you stop noticing it arrives at all. So Zachor is phrased as a command - you have to keep dragging the old darkness back into view on purpose, or the light goes flat.

Watch how this parsha keeps circling indifference. Again and again it warns against הִתְעַלַּמְתָּ - looking away from a neighbor's fallen donkey, from the lost coat lying in the road, the references to a friend's shame we're not meant to uncover... we're not meant to be comfortable. Numbness is a kind of self-hiding: the greatest good can be sitting right in front of you... and you've numbed yourself so strong that you can't see or taste it.

**'You could be there and not even know'.**

Trust me, I get it. Life can kick you in the face, bloody your nose... hell, it'll gauge your eyes out of your head, chew you up, spit you out, and bodyslam you while you're on your way to the corner to put some ice on your wounds...

We've all been there - numbing ourselves... to the pain and disappointment... to the possibility of what or who we can be...

It's like what can happen after enough good nights on a Phish run - enough tours, enough drives home at 3am. The first time you experience that cosmic liftoff of the whole crowd leaving the stratosphere together, nothing tops that! I remember the moment Waves space jam landed into Bowie at IT (2003, yes I got into Phish late... sue me...) - me and the whole crowd almost exploded out of our bodies!...

But by the fortieth show you're half-comparing it to the thirty-nine before, checking whether this one measures up ("eh, the Hood from Gorge was better..." or "Nothing off Big Boat, please, for the love of Gd!").

The band keeps showing up and spinning up merry magic for our enjoyment every night. Nothing there changed. Our natural inclination to numb the experience is what settled in.

**'Don't fall asleep on me'.**

So the work is to REMEMBER - זכור!

**'If you would stop and notice that we number every day'* - the counting, noticing, feeling, ALIVENESS OF THE MOMENT itself is our avodah*.

Gratitude is a muscle, and it weakens greatly the second you stop using it.

'You got one life, blaze on' - and BLAZE ON YOU WILL because you finally noticed there's an eternal flame burning the whole time, sourced from something far greater than anything we could imagine.

I bless us all to be relentlessly aware of the gifts Hashem is bestowing upon us every single second we're alive and breathing, and that we don't need to be **'shocked and persuaded [for our] soul to ignite'**

Good Shabbos, phriends.