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.

We are in the month of Elul.
It׳s the precursor to the High Holiday season.
We need to be prepared.
The Jewish year is comprised of the holidays which mark the seasons.
Each year as we traverse the year we may have the tendency to say to ourselves, it’s Rosh Hashana again?
Wasn’t it just Rosh Hashana?
How did we get here again?
We may feel we are like the hamster on the wheel, mindlessly running as we pass the same markers over and over again.
The Chassidic Rebbe, the Kotzker Rebbe, teaches us that when we pass each station again we should not feel that we are just going round and round. Rather we should view it as an upward spiral. Yes we are reaching the same station again, but this time I’m just a bit higher on the journey than I was last time I arrived at this station.
The Rebbe says there is a special energy available to us at each station, and we can use that positive energy to provide a boost.
For example, when we arrive at Passover, freedom is in the air.
We can use that energy to help free ourselves from the shackles that bind us. It may be freedom from a physical incarceration, or it may be a time to free ourselves from things that hold us back in our hearts or minds.
So what is happening on Rosh Hashana?
I asked a few people their opinions.
They answered that it’s a time to wipe the slate clean, it’s a time of reJEWvenation.
All great answers.
But how do we do that work?
Rabbi Moshe Shapiro teaches us that on Rosh Hashana
“Gd sets the reset button in creation.”
So when we arrive at the station called Roah Hashana we go back to the first Rosh Hashana when it all began, to the time when Gd asks the question of the angels
“Shall we make man?”
On Rosh Hashana Gd is asking should we make this woman/man again?
As the beautiful prayer Unesaneh Tokef details, each and every individual is the subject of Gd’s focus.
Just as Gd created the first man on Rosh Hashana, so too it will be decided if we will be created, or be given the chance to remain creative, for the year to come.
As Rabbi Shapiro says “this is both terrifying and elevating without parallel”.
Gd cares and focuses on me.
We are given the days of Rosh Hashana to plead our case.
“We are given 48 hours to justify our right to life”.
Anyone who stands before a judge knows that in order to be successful in court, you need to prepare.
We are given these precious days to work on wiping the slate clean, to reJEWvenate, so we have a case to make before Avinu Malkeinu, our Father our King.