Many Jews encounter this week's Torah portion every single day without even realizing it. The verse of Deuteronomy 8:10, "You shall eat, be satisfied, and bless the Lord your G-d for the good land that He has given you" should be familiar because it is in the Birkat HaMazon, the Grace After Meals. Not only is it part of Birkat HaMazon, but it is also the prooftext that we recite it after eating bread instead of before.
At first glance, this verse teaches the lesson that we should pause to express gratitude after satisfying our physical needs. That is an important lesson, but reading the verse by itself risks missing Moses' larger argument. This is more than Moses establishing a liturgical obligation or table etiquette. This command gets at the relation between prosperity, memory, and gratitude.
Several years ago, I wrote that a major sin of the Israelites was that they complained so much that they failed to recognize the blessings they had received, including being freed from slavery and being fed with manna and water in the wilderness. Yet they dismissed them as if it were nothing. Yet here, what we see is Moses explain why gratitude is so difficult to sustain.
Right after the directive to bless after eating comes the warning of "Beware lest you forget the Lord your G-d." Notice what Moses does not say. He does not say that wealth is inherently corruptive or that poverty is superior. Moses describes a progression that once one's homes, wealth, and possessions increase, they will slowly forget the One who made those blessings. It gets to the point where one says "My strength and the might of my hand have produced this wealth (Deuteronomy 8:17)."
The issue is not ambition or success. It is normalizing one's blessings until they do not feel like blessings at all. Ironically enough, the greatest threat to gratitude is not hardship. It is success.
We experience this phenomenon more often than we realize. The first home that we were once excited to buy eventually becomes just our mortgage payment. The car we couldn't wait to drive is reduced to our daily commute. The newest iPhone we wanted so badly becomes just another tool in our lives. Good health goes unnoticed until illness reminds us how precious it is. Even the people we love can become so familiar that we forget what a blessing they are before it's too late.
This tendency is neither unique to the ancient Israelites nor is it a sin. It is part of being human. None of this is to diminish personal responsibility or achievement. If anything, it helps place them in their proper context. The challenge is making sure that good circumstances do not lead to entitlement, but to appreciation.
This is why Judaism does not leave gratitude to chance. Jewish tradition recognizes the human tendency to forget, which is perhaps why Judaism so heavily emphasizes remembrance. Instead of hoping people will remember, Judaism builds it in the rhythm of our daily lives so we see things we might otherwise overlook. And it has to be built into daily rhythm because as Moses realized, humans forget quickly. It would explain why Jews say the Shema twice a day and Jewish men put on tefillin as often as they do.
Jews traditionally begin the day by saying the blessing Modeh Ani in order to acknowledge the gift of another day. Throughout the day, blessings are said, so much so that the ancient rabbis said that we should aim for 100 blessing a day. It shows up when we eat food. It is a theme in Jewish holidays, such as Sukkot and Chanukah. It's even in our namesake. The word "יהודי" has the same root as "להודות", meaning to thank or to acknowledge.
When we thank, we do not simply utter words. We realize how good reality can be. Yes, we work hard, we achieve, and we build. But we also have numerous blessings that did not come from us. Judaism reminds us that both of those truths must be held in order to understand reality. But at the same time, gratitude helps us making the same mistake that Moses warned against: believing that all our blessings come from us, and that they're to be expected rather than be gifts.
Moses understood that prosperity not only changes what we possess, but what we notice. Yet perhaps the deeper lesson is that gratitude, when done right, should change how we experience what we possess. A person who believes that everything is owed to them will never feel satiated. There will always be another achievement to accomplish, another possession to acquire, or another reason to feel that we have fallen short in life.
Gratitude does not mean we stop striving. It does not mean we do not acknowledge our own achievements. It means that we see the complete picture. And that is the challenge that Moses proposed: seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. A meal with family. Going on a date. Walking and talking with a friend. Waking up out of bed for another day. The irony is that they are significant precisely because they do happen regularly. Perhaps the lesson here is not to find more reasons to be happy, but to transform in the kind of person who can find the blessings that already exist.
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