With appreciation to Rabbi Philip Weintraub

In addition to being the 30^th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah, it is first Yahrzeit of my hevruta, or study partner, Rabbi Mitch Chefitz, who began the Havurah of South Florida and who I met during my time in Miami. This is his most famous story, The Curse of Blessings, and also the title of his book. I shared several of his stories during the first 30 days after his passing, yet I saved this one for the High Holy Days. As Jews are often known by the most famous book they wrote, he said he would therefore be known as The Curse of Blessings.

The Curse of Blessings
 There was an Officer of the Law, a recent graduate, proud as you can imagine, in his uniform of blue with brass buttons and gold epaulets. He wore a hat with a plume and a sword with a gold and ivory handle. He was as pompous as could be. He was arrogant and bold and callous. Every letter of the alphabet served only to demonstrate his authority and exalt his being.

One day he was walking his beat and heard a commotion in an alley. He ventured into the darkness, and there in the distance saw a man in rags. “Come forward,” he commanded. “Come forward now!” But the man in rags did not come forward. “I am an Officer of the Law, and I command you, come forward!” 

The man in rags did not move. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and spoke, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

 “Do with me?” the Officer of the Law mocked. “Do with me? You don’t do with me! I do with you! I am an Officer of the Law, and I command you to come forward.”

“Now I know what to do with you,” the man in rags said, and as he spoke, he drew his sword. “Now I know what to do. Without further word he moved to attack. 

The Officer of the Law drew his own sword in defense. “Stop that!” he ordered. “Put your sword down right now!” But the man in rags did not stop. The officer of the Law had to parry thrusts left and right. “Stop!” he said again, but to no avail. The officer of the Law was forced to retreat. 

When it seemed the man in rags would prevail, he lowered his guard, and what the Officer of the Law had intended as a parry became a thrust. His sword ran through the man in rags. “I didn’t mean that,” the Officer of the Law said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Why didn’t you stop when I ordered you to? Why did you attack me?”

The man in rags waved the words away. “I am leaving you,” he said, “and as I do, I put upon you the Curse of Blessings.”

“What do you mean?” asked the Officer of the Law, now quite confused.

“The Curse of the Blessings. Every day you must say a new blessing, one you have never said before. On the day you do not say a new blessing, on that day you will die.”

The man in rags closed his eyes. The Officer of the Law looked about for help. There was none to be found. When he turned back, the man in rags had disappeared. He was gone. 

“It was a dream,” the Officer of the Law thought. “Only a dream, I imagined it.”

The time was late in the afternoon. The sun was setting. As much as the Officer of the Law tried to ignore his experience, he could not. The Jewish day ends with the sunset. The Officer of the Law felt his body growing cold and knew from the chill that his life was leaving him. In a panic, he uttered these words of blessing: “You are blessed, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has created such a beautiful sunset.” At once warmth and life flowed back into him. He realized, with both shock and relief, the curse had been for real. 

The next morning, he did not delay. He woke with words of blessing. “You are blessed that You allowed me to wake up this morning.” His life felt secure the entire day. The next morning, he blessed his ability to rise from his bed, the following day, that he could tie his shoes. 

Day after day he found abilities he could bless. That he could go to the bathroom, that he had teeth to brush, that each finger of his hands still worked, that he had toes on his feet and hair on his head. He blessed his clothes, every garment. He blessed his house, the roof and floor, his furniture, every table and chair. 

At last, he ran out of things to bless, so he began to bless relationships. He blessed his family and friends, fellow workers, and those who worked for him. He blessed the mailman and the clerks. He was surprised to find they appreciated the blessings. His words had power. They drew family and friends closer to him. Word went out that the Officer of the Law was a source of blessing. 

Years passed, decades. The Officer of the Law had to go farther afield to find new sources of blessing. He blessed city councils and university buildings, scientists, and their discoveries. As he traveled through the world he became in awe of its balance and beauty and blessed that. The more he learned, the more he had to bless. His life was long, and he had the opportunity to learn in every field. 

He passed the age of one hundred. Most of his friends were long gone. His time was relegated to searching for the purpose in his life and the one source from which all blessings flow. He had long since realized he was not the source but only the conduit, and even that realization was welcomed with a blessing that sustained him for yet another day. 

As he approached the age of one hundred and twenty, he considered that his life was long enough. Even Moses had not lived longer. On his birthday he made a conscious decision to utter no new blessing and allow his life to come to an end. Still, he could recite old blessings, and throughout the day, he received them, all the blessings for his body and his possessions, for relationships that spread throughout the world, for the awesome beauty and balance of creation, and for the deep resonance, the pulse of purpose that pervaded his very being. But no new blessing passed his lips. 

As the sun was setting, a chill progressed inward from his extremities. He did not resist it. In the twilight a figure appeared, the man in rags. “You!” the Officer of the Law exclaimed. “I have thought about you every day for a hundred years! I never meant to harm you. Please, forgive me.”

“You don’t understand,” said the man in rags. “You don’t know who I am, do you? I am the angel who was sent a hundred years ago to harvest your soul, but when I looked at you, so pompous and proud, there was nothing there to harvest. An empty uniform was all I saw. So, I put upon you the Curse of Blessings, and now look what you’ve become!”

The Officer of the Law grasped in an instant all that had happened and why. Overwhelmed he said, “You are blessed, my God, ruler of the universe, that You have kept me alive and sustained me so I could attain this moment.”

“Now look what you’ve done!” the man in rags said in frustration. “A new blessing!”

Life flowed back into the Officer of the Law, and he and the man in rags looked to each other, neither of them knowing quite what to do.

         What does this story teach us?  What lessons do we hear from these words?  While there are many, we could consider, the power of blessings, the influence of gratitude, the strength of attitude, the importance of kindness and humility, or even the danger of prejudice, I think the importance of gratitude might be the most important.

         We currently live in a world that seems “less than.”  Those retired on fixed income haver experienced the belt-tightening imposed by constant inflation, especially in grocery and gas prices.  Those working have seen raises disappear or even worse jobs, business and opportunities crumble.  We live in a world where college graduates have difficulty finding employment and spend more time in their childhood rooms than their parents expected. Some wonder if they will ever be able to afford the American Dream of buying a home.

         Yet amidst all this turmoil and uncertainty, we must remember how blessed we are. Without comparing ourselves to the huge numbers of people in this country and around the world with far greater difficulties, we can see in our own lives how blessed we are. 

         What I see in this story is the recognition of all the good in our lives.  While we may think of ourselves as optimists, pessimists, or realists, we have agency in how we respond to what is happening in our lives. Will we live longer if we say a blessing every day? Not necessarily, but how much more grateful we will feel! How much better our lives might seem! What will life be like if we say a blessing every day? Or 18 blessings? Or 100 blessings? This gratitude challenge is ours as we begin the new month or Marheshvan.

A television show entitled Crossing Over features John Edward, a self-proclaimed psychic medium, who says that his encounters between humans and those who have gone to the spirit world “is ‘driven by a belief in God: it’s energy from that force that allows us to connect with this energy.’^[1] Edward was convinced of his mediumship after a childhood encounter with a psychic reader. As he said,  “She told me things that there is no way she could have known. And the first part of the reading was that this was the path that I was supposed to be on and that I was supposed to be a teacher and help people-and I thought she was nuts.”^[2] I had a similar encounter with psychic John Roncz z”l which I spoke about 4 years ago on Shemini Atzeret Yizkor. Whether or not we believe in psychics, mediums, clairvoyance, clairsentience or signs or whether we think it’s all a hoax is not what is important to me. What is important is that not everything in our lives can be scientifically explained and the more scientists discover, the more they realize they don’t understand.

I chose this introduction because it reminded me of a story from Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s book When We See You Again that deeply connects to Yizkor. Rachel writes: Hersh was always curious about Germany and how it had changed since the war… [When] Hersh was sixteen and already involved with the Hapoel Jerusalem soccer team’s fan club, he was eager to meet the sister-city fan club members of the Werder Bremen soccer team, from Germany, when they came to Jerusalem for some collaborative programs with Hapoel.

Hersh was excited that he was part of the language glue connecting the Germans, Jews, and Arabs. The Germans all spoke English. The Jews and Arabs spoke Hebrew. But not everyone could translate between everyone. Hersh was the youngest, but fluent in both Hebrew and English, so he made many new friends that week. One of the projects the two clubs did together was to paint a giant mural with youth in the Arab neighborhood near our house in Jerusalem. It still stands there, on the wall under the bridge connecting Beit Safafa to Talpiot. …

Those friendships lasted and grew. The Germans [from Bremen] came back to Jerusalem regularly, and Hersh went to Bremen several times on his European adventures. 

In the summer of 2023, one of the Hapoel fan club members was getting married. About twenty of the Germans came for the wedding. Hersh asked if we could host a group of them for dinner one weeknight. 

It was a beautiful evening with perfect weather. We set a long table outside. Hersh and I cooked in the afternoon…. it was Hersh and me hosting a bevy of soccer fans from Bremen, and some of Hersh’s Hapoel pals came as well. 

We had such a lovely evening together. At one point the young German man across from me said how meaningful it was for all of them to have Jewish friends, and that no one eighty years ago in Bremen would have imagined it possible. 

Hersh had told me that on each of his four trips to Germany, it would inevitably come up that he was Jewish, and all of his non-Jewish German friends would talk about the Holocaust with such complicated feelings. He commented that they should not feel remorse for something their grandparents did, and that he was sad, but touched, that they felt the need to bring it up to him. Two of them had asked him to forgive them for “the sins of our grandfathers.” Hersh was insistent that he was not the right addressee and they were not the ones needing to ask forgiveness. I thought it was moving and sensitive of all of them. 

There is a gorgeous photo from the night of our dinner in August 2023. Hersh looks glorious, as do all those healthy and vibrant young people brimming with potential….  

Recently, on a Tuesday at two in the afternoon, [my husband] Jon, [our daughters] Leebie, Orly, and I… decided to go visit Hersh’s grave. I don’t go there often. I don’t need to go there to feel Hersh. And going to a child’s grave is puzzling, upside down and unraveling. But we went. 

As we were parking, we looked at the large area where Hersh is buried and saw two people standing over Hersh’s grave. They were putting something there. They were unfamiliar to us. I said I would wait in the car. 

Jon, Leebie, and Orly walked over to Hersh’s grave. Orly texted me right away, “Come.”… 

The young man and woman introduced themselves. They were Leonard and Alex, on vacation from Germany. They were staying in Tel Aviv, but had come that day for a Hapoel Jerusalem soccer game in the evening. So they came early to see Hersh. 

Leonard said, “We came to say thank you to Hersh for being our matchmaker.” 

Alex went on to explain, “When October 7th happened, one of my closest friends…. told me all about Hersh. I joined her from the start, attending vigils and gatherings to bring awareness about the hostages and specifically about Hersh.” 

…. Leonard went on to share that he had read articles about Hersh and started to come to the gatherings for the hostages [in Bremen]. It was there that he met Alex and heard more about Hersh. They would hold the poster with Hersh’s huge smile shining, with the word underneath: Entführt. Kidnapped. 

It was through the committed struggle to free Hersh that Alex and Leonard became close, and now they are a couple. 

In the Talmud it says that successful matchmaking is harder than the miracle of splitting the sea. Jewish folklore says that if someone matches three couples, that matchmaker gets a bonus place in the Garden of Eden when they go to The World to Come. 

Even though neither [Leonard nor Alex] … is Jewish, Leonard said he knew about that idea. He continued, “We know Hersh is already in the Garden of Eden, but because he successfully brought Alex and me together, we also know he has at least a third more of a portion.” 

Later, …we went back and read the note they had left on Hersh’s grave. [I]t had messages from each of them: 

[From Alex]: Dear Hersh, What a beautiful view you got from your place of rest. Wherever you are in spirit, I hope you are happy and that you get good reception to watch the soccer games. 

[From Leonard]: Thank you for inspiring me to fight for light, love and peace. 

[Rachel continues]: I imagine Alex and Leonard one day telling their grandchildren about the forever boy who was their matchmaker. Those grandchildren who would not be if they had not met during a dark time when the world was breaking. And I imagine that one day, those grandchildren will save the world, and then all will be illuminated. 

Hersh managed to do something harder than splitting the sea, all the way from the Garden of Eden.    

Well done, sweet boy. What else will you do from there?^[3]

I share Rachel’s story because it reminds us that those taken from us might be able to make profound impacts through their legacies. One of the central teachings of Judaism, and one that I find challenging, is that things happen for a reason, even if we don’t know what that reason is until years later…or even if we never know. One of the best ways by which to remember our loved ones is to tell their stories, share their values and keep their legacies alive. That is what I hope we will strive to do when these holidays end tomorrow night. Through honoring the lives they lived, we keep them alive, near and dear in our hearts.

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^[1] Edward, John (2001). Crossing Over. Jodere Group. p. 21. ISBN 1-58872-002-0.

^[2] “John Edward: An Alleged Psychic Who Claims to Communicate With the Dead”. CNN. Larry King Live. June 19, 1998. Archived from the original on February 20, 2003.

^[3] Rachel Goldberg Polin, When We See You Again (New York: Random House, 2026), pgs. 246-52.