I don’t drive a racecar, nor operate radar. But I do enjoy a palindrome or two.
And I’m not confusing cars and cats, I’m just using a sentence that reads the same forwards as it does backwards.
Why? Because I want to bring your attention to a profound palindromic message embedded in this week’s Torah portion.
The portion begins with the words: רְאֵ֗ה אָֽנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה See, I place (i.e. give, Notayn) before you today a blessing and a curse.
The Hebrew word, Notayn, give, (or Nossayn, in the traditional pronunciation) is spelled here as a palindrome.
Life is not filled with objective blessings and curses; G-d guides us through life and we choose how to perceive it.
If we observe life through the lens of blessing, we experience blessings. And the opposite is true if we do otherwise.
We experience life as we choose to perceive it.
That’s not to say that everything is always rosy. But what we highlight, what we give our attention to, is what becomes the defining part of our story
Just yesterday I heard someone relating about their fathers experience in the holocaust. He would talk about how a Nazi guard threw a raw potato at him. A cruel and degrading gesture - but one that saved his life, since he then had food for the day.
On a similar note, our Torah portion discusses the mitzvah of giving Tzedakah. The same Hebrew letters we discussed above, נתן, Natan (or Nosson) mean to give.
We often think about giving as depleting our resources when we give. And of course when we give our time or attention, food or money to another, we no longer have that time or that money.
But the Torah reminds us that giving is never one-sided. Like the palindrome itself, what we send out comes back to us. Often in ways far greater than we expect.
Our perspective shapes our reality. Our giving shapes our returns.
And while G-d controls the world, we hold the power to choose how we experience it.