Can the blessing we received distance us from the One who gave it?
Some blessings are easiest to recognize while we are still missing them. As long as we are struggling, asking and praying, we know we need help. But when the prayer is answered and life begins to settle, a different danger appears: what once felt like a miracle becomes routine, and what once felt like a request becomes obvious.
Haazinu warns: “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” (Deuteronomy 32:15). The problem is not abundance. The problem is abundance without memory. A person can receive health, livelihood, family, success and strength, yet instead of letting the blessing deepen the relationship with the Giver, it can create the illusion that he now manages on his own.
The correction is not to fear goodness or to ask for less. It is to remember more. To stop inside the ordinary things and ask: what in my life did I once pray for? What now feels normal but was once a dream?
Perhaps this is one of life’s deepest tests: as I received more, did I become more grateful - or did I simply get more used to having it?
Which prayer of yours has already been answered - but you have forgotten that you once prayed for it?
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They tell of a Jewish man who built a very small business. In the early years he fought for every customer. There were months when he did not know how he would pay the salaries, and nights when he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. But every morning, before opening the business, he would enter the synagogue. He prayed slowly, gave charity, and said to the Holy One, blessed be He, in simple words: “Master of the universe, this business is Yours. I will do what I can, and You send the blessing.”
The years passed and the business began to succeed. At first one more employee joined, then another branch opened, and later there were already dozens of employees. The same Jew who once did not know whether he would have enough money to finish the month began managing very large turnovers. But together with the business, his daily routine also changed. At first he merely shortened his prayer a little because there was an early meeting. Then he began arriving late. After some time he prayed quickly, and when the business expanded even more there were mornings when he told himself: the Holy One, blessed be He, knows how busy I am; I will make it up later.
One day he met an older Jew who had known him from the difficult years. They spoke about the business, and the older man was impressed and said: “Baruch Hashem, I remember how you used to pray that the Holy One, blessed be He, would take you out of your troubles. Look at the blessing you received.” The businessman smiled. Then the older man looked at him and said a sentence that gave him no rest: “There is only one thing I do not understand. When the business was close to collapse, you had time every morning for the Holy One, blessed be He. Now, when He has given you everything you asked for, now you no longer have time for Him?”
That sentence contains a question far larger than a story about a wealthy man. It is a question about every one of us: can it be that we pray for years to receive something, and when the Holy One, blessed be He, finally gives it to us, the very gift we received begins to distance us from the One who gave it?
Moses says in the Song of Haazinu a very difficult verse: “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, thick, and corpulent; he abandoned God who made him and disgraced the Rock of his salvation” (Deuteronomy 32:15). Notice the order. The Torah does not say that Jeshurun kicked and therefore grew fat. It says exactly the opposite: first, “Jeshurun grew fat,” and only afterward, “and kicked.” First came the blessing; afterward came the problem.
That is surprising. We would have expected trouble to be what distances a person from the Holy One, blessed be He. Someone who suffers may ask questions; someone in crisis may break. But Moses warns here about a completely different danger: sometimes precisely when everything works out, a spiritual danger begins that does not exist with the same intensity when something is lacking.
Rashi explains “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” with a sharp image: like a fattened ox that kicks its owner. The ox does not kick because its owner starved it. On the contrary. It became strong and fat from the food it received, and now the very strength given to it by its owner enables it to kick him.
What a disturbing image. The Holy One, blessed be He, gives a person strength, and he uses that strength to feel that he no longer needs Him. He gives a person intelligence, and the person says: I can manage on my own. He gives him livelihood, and the person begins to think that everything is due to his own talent. He gives him health, and the person forgets what a gift it is simply to get up in the morning. He gives him a home and a family, and the things for which he once prayed with tears gradually become taken for granted.
But this warning does not begin in Haazinu. Moses had already prepared Israel for it in Parashat Ekev. He describes a state of abundance: “Lest you eat and be satisfied, build good houses and dwell in them, and your cattle and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold increase, and all that you have increases” (Deuteronomy 8:12-13). And what happens after all those blessings arrive? “Then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8:14).
We must ask: why does satisfaction cause forgetting? Seemingly, the exact opposite should happen. If the Holy One, blessed be He, has given me so much, I should remember Him more.
The Torah reveals here something very deep about the human soul. When I am lacking something, I feel dependent. When I stand before a problem I do not know how to solve, I know there are things that are not in my hands. But when everything succeeds for a long time, a dangerous illusion slowly forms: I already know how life works. I know how to manage. I built this. I succeeded. I did it.
Then comes the next verse: “And you will say in your heart: my power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17).
Notice that the Torah does not say the person announces this in the street. “You will say in your heart.” Outwardly, he may say “Baruch Hashem” ten times a day, but deep inside he is already convinced that the system works because he manages it well. His mouth speaks of Divine assistance, but his experience of life says, “my power and the strength of my hand.”
Yet here the Torah does not ask a person to erase himself. It does not say that you have no ability and no talent. On the contrary, the very next verse says: “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). You do have strength. You did achieve. You labored, built, worked, and invested. But who gave you the power to achieve?
This point is very important, because the Torah is not against success. Judaism does not ask a person to remain poor in order to remain a believer. Abraham was wealthy, Isaac was blessed, Jacob returned with a family and possessions. The question is not whether you have much. The question is what happens to you when you have much.
Does blessing increase gratitude or reduce it? As I receive more, do I become a person who gives more thanks, or a person who feels more entitled? Does success make me humbler because I understand how many things had to fall into place for me to arrive here, or does it make me think that I am the reason everything worked out?
Perhaps this is one of the hardest spiritual tests. It is easier to feel the Holy One, blessed be He, when we need salvation. When a child needs a match, we know how to pray. When we wait for medical test results, we know how to say Tehillim. When the business is in danger, we know how to ask. When there is a problem at home, we know how to open our hearts. But what happens the day after the salvation arrives?
Do we know how to pray after the prayer has been answered?
That is an entirely different question. Is my relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, built only on what I need from Him, or do I want Him even when, at this moment, I do not need anything?
King David says: “I will lift the cup of salvations and call upon the name of the Lord” (Psalms 116:13). We are accustomed to calling upon the name of God from within distress, but David says that even when he holds a cup of salvation, he continues to call upon God. Salvation does not end the relationship. It is meant to deepen it.
This may be the difference between asking and gratitude. When I lack something, I know exactly what I lack. But when I have it, I may stop noticing that it is a gift.
The sages discuss in tractate Berakhot how one blesses over rains after a person merits seeing the abundance he had waited for, and they bring expressions of thanksgiving and the blessing recited over goodness (Berakhot 59b). A person’s spiritual work does not end when the request is answered. There is the service of prayer before salvation and the service of gratitude after salvation.
And here “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” becomes strikingly contemporary. We live in a generation that enjoys things kings only a few centuries ago could not have dreamed of. A person presses a button and the room becomes warm. He opens a tap and there is water. He takes a small device from his pocket and speaks to someone on the other side of the world. Information that once required an entire library appears within seconds before our eyes. Things that once would have seemed miraculous conveniences have become so ordinary that we no longer notice them.
That is exactly the danger of abundance: not that the good is not good, but that the good becomes ordinary.
When a gift becomes ordinary, it stops feeling like a gift. And when it stops feeling like a gift, the Giver can disappear from the picture.
Therefore, the Torah does not command us only to ask for blessing. It teaches us how to survive the blessing spiritually once it arrives.
Perhaps this is one of the depths of the blessings over enjoyment. A Jew does not even take a cup of water and put it to his lips before pausing for a moment and saying: there is something here that I received. The blessing is not for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He, who does not need our thanks for an apple. We need the blessing so that the apple will not become self-evident in our eyes.
Maimonides writes that the purpose of blessings is to remember the Creator always and to fear Him (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Berakhot 1:3). Into the simplest actions of the day, the Torah inserts a small pause that says to a person: do not become so accustomed to the world that you forget that Someone gave it to you.
Here I would like to ask a question that perhaps everyone should take from Parashat Haazinu: which prayer of mine has already been answered, but I forgot that I once prayed for it?
Perhaps the person sitting beside you at home is the person you once prayed to find. Perhaps the child who sometimes drives you out of your mind is the child you once begged for with tears. Perhaps the job you complain about is the job you once pleaded to receive. Perhaps the house in which you mostly see what needs fixing is the house you once dreamed of having. Perhaps the ordinary health of the morning, which you barely think about, is what someone else is now praying for with all his strength.
How many things do we have today that were once a prayer?
That question can change the whole form of life. A person can pass his days with an endless list of what he still lacks, while at the same time standing inside yesterday’s answered prayers and not seeing them.
Perhaps that is the tragedy of “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.” Not only that a person received and forgot who gave. He may receive so much that he is no longer able to feel that he received.
Therefore Moses does not ask us to fear blessing. He asks us to become people whom blessing does not spoil. People who, the more they have, know how to thank more. The more they succeed, the more they remember how dependent they are on the kindness of Heaven. The better life treats them, the more generous, humble, and sensitive they become.
Perhaps this is the real test of abundance: not how much I received, but who I became because of what I received.
If blessing caused me to think that I am the master of the house, it became a test. If it caused me to understand how much I have to be grateful for, it became service of God.
And now we can return to the Jew with whom we began. When the business was small, he knew how to pray because he needed the Holy One, blessed be He. When the business grew, he had to learn a harder spiritual task: to know that he still needed the Holy One, blessed be He, even when his bank account no longer reminded him.
Perhaps that is why the Torah warns us precisely when everything is good: “Take care lest you forget the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:11). There is a forgetting born from trouble, but there is a more dangerous forgetting born from having grown accustomed to blessing.
Every one of us can ask today: is there a blessing in my life that has become so ordinary that I have stopped seeing it? A person, a home, a child, health, livelihood, Torah, community, Shabbat, the ability to wake up in the morning and live another day.
Perhaps Parashat Haazinu asks something simple and enormous of us: do not wait until something is taken from you in order to understand that it was a gift.
“Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” is not a verse against abundance. It is a warning against abundance without memory.
Its correction is not to ask for less.
Its correction is to remember more.
To remember who gave the strength. To remember what we once prayed for. To remember that the most ordinary things in our lives are not self-evident. And to know how to say to the Holy One, blessed be He, not only when something is missing: “Master of the universe, give me,” but also when nothing is missing: “Master of the universe, I remember from Whom I received.”