Gratitude Is a Muscle
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
This Dvar Torah was edited from one written by Dr. Mijal Bitton, Spiritual Leader and co-founder of The Downtown Minyan in Manhattan, and a Latina Jew of Middle Eastern descent. Mijal is a Sacks Scholar, a Maimonides Fund Fellow, a Hartman Fellow, and a New Pluralist Field Builder. She co-hosts the Wondering Jews podcast with Noam Weissman.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
This week's Dvar Torah on gratitude is dedicated in loving memory of David Schaecter z"l, a holocaust survivor and founder of the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach.
David, along with his wife wife Sydney, was a great friend and supporter of CAJE. We are grateful for all that he gave, for the countless lives he touched, and for the legacy of love and remembrance he leaves behind.
May his memory be a blessing.
Stop Waiting to Feel Grateful
Years ago, when I was just starting out, I helped organize an exclusive retreat for educators.
We worked incredibly hard. Every detail — food, swag, content, décor — was planned thoughtfully to show participants they were cared for and considered.
Yet, the participants mostly found things to criticize. I was frustrated and discouraged.
I went to my supervisor — a trusted mentor — and asked why it was so hard for them to appreciate everything we had invested in this invitation-only program.
He said something that’s stayed with me ever since: “You’re expecting gratitude to come naturally. But it doesn’t. It has to be taught.”
Following his advice, we changed our sessions.
Each day began with a prompt inviting participants to express appreciation — for the program, for each other, for anything.
That small change transformed the dynamic of the entire retreat and taught me a lasting lesson about gratitude:
Gratitude doesn’t usually appear on its own. It’s something we must practice.
This isn’t some new-age insight lifted from a mindfulness blog.
It’s ancient wisdom, modeled in this week’s Torah portion.
The Practice of Gratitude
Parashat Ki Tavo opens with Bikkurim, the offering of first fruits.
Israelite farmers were instructed to take the first fruits of their harvest and bring them to the Temple in Jerusalem.
They would present their baskets to the priest and recite a formal declaration: a brief retelling of Jewish history, from wandering to slavery to our arrival in the Land, culminating in gratitude to God for the Land and its abundance.
But Bikkurim wasn’t just a personal act — it became a ritual of public celebration.
The Mishnah describes farmers traveling in groups, forming festive caravans.
As they passed through towns, people came out to greet them. The group was led by a decorated ox — gilded horns, olive-branch crown — symbols of strength, dignity, and plenty.
Everyone participated — rich and poor alike. There was music, singing, dancing, and flutes.
It wasn’t merely agricultural — it was a national ritual of joy, memory, and shared identity.
The practice of Bikkurim is powerful not just because it embodies gratitude in such a tangible, communal way, but also because of what it challenges.
We live in a culture that treats gratitude as a feeling — real only if it bubbles up naturally, authentic only if it arises on its own.
Bikkurim pushes back. It teaches that gratitude can be taught, ritualized, socialized — and that it needs to be.
The lessons of Bikkurim are backed by research in social psychology.
Studies on gratitude and well-being show that regular practices, like keeping a daily gratitude journal or writing thank-you letters, can measurably increase happiness and reshape how people see themselves and the world.
Psychologists have found that gratitude functions less like a passing emotion and more like a muscle: the more consistently we exercise it, the stronger and more transformative it becomes.
Reclaiming Gratitude
There’s a verse later in Ki Tavo that always stops me in my tracks.
It’s a chilling moment of divine explanation—the reason given for the Jews’ calamities in the Torah’s long list of blessings and curses: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with a good heart, out of the abundance of everything.” (Devarim/ Deuteronomy 28:47)
This verse hits hard because it feels so real. Most of us today are surrounded by abundance. We are enveloped by blessings.
Even with all the very real challenges we face — even as we continue to pray and advocate and ache for our hostages to come home, for the war in Israel to end — most of us are living safer, wealthier, longer, and more secure lives than nearly all our ancestors.
We have so much that we’ve become blind to just how much we have. And instead of gratitude, we often slip into decadence, cynicism, and a culture of complaint.
Ki Tavo is a wake-up call. It asks us to reclaim gratitude — not by waiting for it to arrive naturally, not by hoping it bubbles up organically, but by choosing it.
By teaching it to our kids, our students, our partners, and ourselves.
By insisting that practicing gratitude daily is essential to how we live and who we are.
If we learn to do it, we will quickly find that our ability to see all that we should be grateful for expands.
As the Christian minister and author Norman Vincent Peale once wrote: “The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for.”
This practice doesn’t just make life better — it makes us better Jews.
Our very name as Jews traces back to Judah — Yehuda — whose name itself means gratitude, as Leah declared: “This time I will thank God.”
As we close one year and step into the next, let’s remember this practice.
To become people of gratitude is at the heart of what it means to be a Jew.
