This week our family spent a couple of days in Upstate New York and while we were there we visited a Maple Farm that was next door to where we were staying and a dairy farm. These places were not official tourist sites but when we knocked on their doors, they were more than happy to show us around and give us some of their time.
Learning how one farmer harvests 1400 maple trees and the tremendous amount of work that is put into making sure the bottle of maple syrup on our table tastes good, gave us lots of sweet food for thought.
The hour and a half that we spent with Frank Albano at his Albano Dairy farm was no less fascinating. He showed us around the cowsheds, we saw all the newborn calves, watched the milking process and learned all about the tremendous amount of effort, care and consideration that is put into dairy production and looking after all the cows.
Likewise here, when we left all the cows and goats and gave a big thank you to Frank for his time, we were left with a much deeper appreciation for how everything lands up on our breakfast table.
So often we buy stuff from the supermarket and have no idea of how much work and effort, and how many different people have had to work hard to help make this product end up on the store shelves. Learning to understand this process certainly helps you appreciate what we eat and consume a whole lot more.
In a slightly different manner, the weekly Torah Portion describes, how important it is to learn to have gratitude to G-d for all the blessings that we eat and consume. It encourages us to make a blessing of thanks after we have eaten and are satisfied, and to contemplate the blessings that have caused this food to grow or be produced and end up providing us with sustenance.
In later years during the times of the Temple, the Rabbis added the concept of adding blessings before we eat, as a way of processing this concept a little more before we begin a meal.
As Moses exhorts the Jews to be mindful of appreciating the blessings that help generate their successes, he also reminds them that the failure to do so, leads to an over extended ego that can have harmful effects on oneself and on a society as a whole.
Gratitude and appreciating our blessings can take on many forms, and in so many ways it is built into the daily structure of Judaism via the Mitzvos and blessings. While a better and healthier self, may not be the goal of having the gratitude, one can be certain, that it will provide multiple side benefits to one's perception and appreciation of the world around us, G-d's blessings, and all the hard work that is done by so many people each and every day, to help make our food chain work the way it does.
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel