These are exciting days. Parents are accompanying their children to schools, and many are starting new chapters these days, in every area. Everyone is a bit more festive, smiling more, and also photographed more. But in another month? In another two months? What happens in the depth of the year, in the routine? Will anyone still photograph their child on the way to school a week from now?
*”This day God commands you to observe these statutes”* — so it says in Parashat Ki Tavo, which we read this past Shabbat. Why does it say "this day"? After all, the Torah was given long ago, at Mount Sinai, and we're reading these verses now, thousands of years later.
Rashi explains it this way: *”Every day they should be as new in your eyes as if you had been commanded on them that very day.”*
The Torah asks us to feel, every day, as though we're once again standing at the foot of Mount Sinai — to sense anew each day how fascinating it is. So that when we learn, we feel not staleness but renewal, not drowsiness but awakening. As if every morning is the first morning of school, and a new page can be opened. This is a wonderful blessing for the start of the school year, and for anyone beginning something new, anywhere: "Every day they should be as new in your eyes."
Amen. Wishing us all success.
