Last week I should have been looking down.
This week I was looking up.
While driving home from an errand my eye was caught by an arresting sight.
Our neighborhood has been graced with a new hospital. The Arthur M.Blank Hospital, is a brand new, 19 story, 2 million square foot pediatric hospital which has recently opened.
It is a gift to the children of Atlanta and this state of the art building will be instrumental in changing many lives and saving many lives.
For those of us in the neighborhood this has meant other changes as well as the traffic has increased and the traffic patterns have shifted.
We are also in the flight path of a helicopter which carries out life saving missions while creating a new level of noise.
But today I saw things a little differently.
As I returned from my errands I happened to look up and from this different vantage point, for the first time I saw the helicopter perched at the top of the building.
It looked like a bird ready to soar. It looked steady and dependable. I fully saw this helicopter in its role as an instrument of saving life.
It actually moved me to tears as I thought about the hope and relief it would bring to a parent anxiously awaiting its arrival.
I thought that next time I hear the whirring blades of the helicopter I will focus on this sight, and remind myself that bird is on its way to change someone’s life for the better.
Maybe even save a life.
I will see it differently.
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitze, boasts a whopping 74 mitzvot or commandments. This is most commandments that are collected in a single portion in the Torah.
How do we view this onslaught of new commandments?
It may seem that we are now being given another 74 commandments to carry, more instructions that will just bog us down. But study of the nature of these Mitzvot opens our eyes to the beauty of Torah wisdom.
The word Mitzva shares the root of the Hebrew word ztivui which means commandment, therefore a mitzva is giving us instruction.
But, Mitzva also shares the letters of the word Tzevet which means team. When we do mitzvot we are partners with Gd, when we do these actions we put ourselves on Gd’s team to repair the world.
Our job is to look around the world, our world, and see what opportunities there are for repair.
Therefore the Parsha informs our proper attitudes on every interaction: education, relationships, work, charity, agriculture, making protective fencing and even the laws regarding lost objectives.
Yes we need to return them.
It’s a Mitzva.

But part of that Mitzva is not to be indifferent and turn away if one sees a lost object.
Indeed, are commanded to pay attention to those people who might be lost as well.
Sivan Rahav Meir teaches the above lessons and shares a moving story that was told to her by an educator in Israel.
He shared that it was the first day of school in his fifth grade classroom and the kids arrived and started jockeying for positions with seats. It’s an intense social exercise and the popular kids have their pick of seat mates while there are invariably those who don’t have classmates who would like to sit with them. The teacher noticed a boy standing to the side watching the hullabaloo. He imagined the child was shy or didn’t have the social skills to pick a spot. He approached the boy and asked if he could find him a seat. The young man demurred. He explained that he had many friends in the class. He was not unsure of where to sit. Rather he wanted to wait and see if once everything calmed down there was someone without a seat partner, and he was going to choose to sit there.
This student was a student of Torah, seeing those who might need to be seen.
He was not indifferent.
He was looking for someone who was lost and be seeing that person he was going to return them to themselves.
This week I read a post written by a war widow in Israel. She wrote that there is a great deal of attention paid to the widows who have lost their husbands in this terrible war. As one of them, she is very appreciative of the kindness that has been extended to her. But then she said something so poignant. She shared that there are many women in her community who have never been married at all. They haven’t been blessed with children. They are suffering.
They are not seen.
She asked us all to pay attention to those in the shadows and lend support and comfort to them as well.
It’s the message of our Parsha.
To look and see those who are not seen and support them through their challenges.
The Torah puts in place these mitzvot that help to repair the world, to give us an opportunity to become a member of The Team, Gd’s Team, where our role is to help, protect and repair-to make sure society does not forget those who are on the periphery.
It’s all a matter of focusing our sights and sharpening our eyes to see the whole picture.
And then - do something!
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!