The Fellowship for Jewish Learning
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Box 17291, Stamford CT 06907
The Rabbi's Corner
FROM THE TORAH
KI-TAVO: The Fiftieth Sedra of the Torah
Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8
The sedra contains several declarations, some to be uttered by the Israelite settler in thanksgiving or petition and others bearing the thunderous motivation from God as communicated through Moses, presented alongside observations of the significance and immediacy of "this day" and characterized later by the narrator as "the words of the covenant which the Eternal commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them at Horeb" (28:69).
When you come (Ki-Tavo) to the Land and have settled in it, bring some of its first fruits in a basket to the kohen in the place at which the Eternal your God shall choose to establish His Name. The kohen shall take the basket from your hand and place it before the Mizbeyach (Altar) of the Eternal your God. You shall then declare before the Eternal your God in prescribed words this account: My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt and sojourned there few in number, becoming a great, mighty and numerous nation. But the Egyptians oppressed us and imposed hard labor upon us. We cried out to the Eternal, the God of our fathers. He heard our plea and saw our suffering and brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with awesome display of signs and wonders. He brought us here and gave us this Land, flowing with milk and honey. So now I have brought the first of the fruit of the Land which You, O Eternal, have given to me. (26:5-10) [The preceding passage has found its way into the Haggadah of Pesach, forming the Biblical basis, in the Magid section, of the midrashic passages which are inspired by it.] Place it before the Eternal your God, and on the occasion of this declaration you shall rejoice in appreciation of all the good that the Eternal your God has given you and your household and the Levite and the foreigner who is in your midst.
When you finish setting aside the ma'aser (tithe/tenth) of your produce in the third year, the year of the ma'aser, and you have given to the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan, and to the widow, enough for them to eat within your gates so that they can be satisfied, you shall make the following declaration before the Eternal your God: I have cleared the holy from my house and also I have given it to the Levite, the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow, in accordance with your commandment. I have not eaten it in mourning and I have not cleared it while ritually impure. I have not offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the Eternal my God; I have acted in accordance with all that You have commanded Me. Look down from Your holy abode, from heaven, and bless Your people, Israel, and the Land you are giving to us, as You promised our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.
This day the Eternal your God commands you to observe the laws with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared this day that the Eternal will be your God whose ways you will follow, whose laws you will observe, and whose voice you will heed. And the Eternal has declared this day that you will be His treasured people, as He has said (cf. 7:6 and Exodus 19:5), to observe His commandments, to make you supreme over all the nations which He has made, praiseworthy, a holy people to the Eternal your God. Moses and the Levite Kohanim declared that on this day Israel is becoming "the people of the Eternal your God" (27:9): you should obey His imperatives.
Moses and the Elders of Israel commanded the people to set up great stones coated with plaster "on the day that you cross the Jordan to the Land which the Eternal your God is giving you" (27:2). You shall write upon them all the words of this Torah well clarified and erect the stones on Mount Ebal. There you shall build a Mizbeyach to the Eternal your God, made of whole stones upon which iron has not been raised, and you shall offer upon it burnt offerings to the Eternal your God, and there you shall slaughter peace-offerings to be consumed in joy. In the meantime, Moses instructed the six tribes of Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin, to bless the people upon Mount Gerizim, and the six tribes of Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naftali, to stand for the curse upon Mount Ebal, "when you cross the Jordan" (27:12; cf. 11:29 ff.). The Levites shall declare to every man of Israel in a loud voice the following twelve prohibitions couched uniformly in the warning words, "Cursed is the one who...," to which the entire people shall answer "Amen": (1) secretly emplaces an idol, (2) degrades one's parent, (3) moves the boundary of one's neighbor, (4) misleads the blind, (5) corrupts the judgment of a foreigner, orphan or widow, (6) has intercourse with the wife of one's father, (7) has intercourse with a lower animal, (8) has intercourse with one's half-sister, (9) has intercourse with one's mother-in-law, (10) secretly strikes another, (11) accepts a bribe in a capital case, and (12) fails to uphold the words of this Torah. (27:14-26) Obversely, if you heed the Eternal your God and obey His commandments, then He will make you supreme over all the nations of the earth and you shall be blessed in all conceivable ways: in the city and in the field, in your offspring, human and animals, as well as the produce of your land and the stock of your storehouses, in all your endeavors, by the frustration and panic of your enemies, in your preeminence among the nations. For obedience to God's commands, "you shall lend to many nations but you shall not borrow" (28:12), "the Eternal shall place you as a head and not as a tail" (28:13), "you shall be only above and shall not be below" (28:13).
However, if you do not hearken to the voice of the Eternal your God to observe His commandments, then the converse of the aforementioned blessings will be your curse. In that spirit, your anxiety alone for the evil of having forsaken Me will be fatal. The Eternal will strike you with plague, heat, wind, fever, thirst, lesions, and the sword. "Your heavens over your head will be copper and the land beneath you will be iron" (28:23). Dust and dirt will rain upon the land. "Your carcass will be food for every bird of the sky and animal of the earth" (28:26). The Eternal will strike you with the incurable Egyptian plagues of boils (cf. Exodus 9:8) and hemorrhoids (cf. Genesis 12:17). He will strike you with insanity, blindness and confusion, allowing your victimization by others. Regarding you all the kingdoms of the earth will quake with horror. If you betrothe a woman, another man will lie with her. If you build a house, you will not dwell in it. If you plant a vineyard, you will not redeem it. (cf. 20:5 ff.) Your livestock will be robbed from you and enjoyed by others. There will be no savior. Your offspring will be given to another people; your eyes will see it but you will be powerless to do anything about it. A nation you have not known will consume the fruit of your land and all of your labor. The Eternal will lead you and your king to a nation you and your fathers did not know and there you will serve other gods, of wood and of stone. You will be frustrated in all of your efforts to be fruitful: for abundant seed you will harvest little because of the locust, for all of your work in the vineyard you will not drink or gather in because of the worm, for all of your olive trees you will not anoint because they will drop, for all of your sons and daughters they will not be yours because of captivity. The foreigner in your midst will ascend higher than you, and you will descend lower. "He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him; he will be the head and you will be the tail." (28:44) (cf. 28:13) Because you did not serve the Eternal your God in joy when everything was abundant, you shall serve your enemies in privation. "He will put an iron yoke upon your neck until He destroys you." (28:48) The Eternal will bring against you a far-off nation, as an eagle swoops, whose language you do not know, brazen, disrespectful to old and young: it will devour everything, it will besiege your cities, toppling your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted. You will feel compelled to eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters. The tender among you will turn selfish: against his brother and his wife and his surviving children, he will hoard the flesh of his children that he will eat. Even any punishment that is not written in this book of the Torah He will bring against you until you are destroyed. Instead of being as numerous as the stars in heaven (Genesis 15:5), you will be left few in number, and just as the Eternal once rejoiced over you to benefit you and multiply you, so shall the Eternal rejoice over you to destroy you. The Eternal will scatter you among the peoples from one end of the earth to the other. In your dispersion you will not be tranquil; rather, you will not rest, your heart will tremble, you will suffer longing, insecure of life, frightened night and day, unsure of your livelihood. "In the morning you will say, 'If only it were evening!' and in the evening you will say, 'If only it were morning!'" (29:67) The Eternal will return you to Egypt on ships--a way that I told you never to see again. You will try to sell yourselves as slaves--but no one will buy. [This series of curses, known as Tochachah (Admonition)
At this point, immediately following the curses, the narrator informs us that these are the words of the covenant (brit) which the Eternal commissioned Moses to conclude with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He concluded with them at Horeb (identified with Sinai).
Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: Although you were witness to the wonders that the Eternal performed on your behalf in the land of Egypt, the Eternal has not given you the capacity to understand their significance until now, forty years after I began to lead you through the wilderness. During all this time your clothes have not worn out, nor have your sandals. You made it through without eating bread or drinking wine or any other liquor in order that you might know that I the Eternal am your God. You stood up in battle to Sichon king of Cheshbon and Og king of Bashan, defeating them and distributing their land to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, as their heritage. So observe the words of this covenant and do them, so that you succeed in whatever you do.
In the sixth of the seven haftarot of consolation (between Tisha B'av and Rosh Hashanah), Isaiah 60:1-22, the prophet projects a shining, glorious future for the captive nation as if it were the present: "Arise! Shine! For your light has arrived, and the glory of the Eternal has shined upon you" (60:1). The conditions conform in spirit with the blessings promised for obedience in the sedra. But there is also in the haftarah the contrast with other nations: "Darkness shall cover the earth, and dense cloud the kingdoms..." (60:2)--perhaps comparable to the admonition in the sedra for Israel's possible disobedience. Nonetheless, the overwhelming confidence and intensity of this haftarah in support of captive Israel fulfill the purpose of nechemta (consolation)
Physical cause and effect is a fundamental principle behind scientific theories of the universe. Moral cause and effect is a fundamental principle behind Judaism, this month of Elul in anticipation of the Ten Days of Repentance, and particularly of the Book of Deuteronomy. Although Sedra Ki-Tavo comes up this week in the normal, annual order of Torah portions, it significantly precedes in close proximity Yom Hazikaron (the Day of Remembrance, viz., Rosh Hashanah) and Yom Hadin (the Day of Judgment, viz., Yom Kippur). It contains the promise of blessings as the virtual effect of causative virtue and the thunder of bad things to come as the effect of bad moral input, as it were. Beyond the issue of literalness lies the Biblical and Jewish view of destiny: that the universe is created and governed by a lawgiving deity. Evidence of this proposition is all too frequently lacking. Innocent, even morally courageous people are oftimes the recipients of what the sedra characterizes as punishments. But just as science may be employed to reshape the world into a more human-friendly place, so may the Biblical/Jewish concept of reward and punishment be considered the touchstone for the society and the individual lives to which we aspire. Judaism admits the mystery of God's ways in rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked, but a student of Judaism could not tolerate not acting in accordance with the lessons of this sedra. We view ourselves as God's junior partners, knowing only what we are allowed to know but doing all that we can.
FROM OUR RABBI ERIC H. HOFFMAN
LOOKING AHEAD TO THE NEW YEAR 5771
May it be for good and for blessing!
May it be for good and for blessing!
ROSH HASHANAH SERVICES
at the Long Ridge School
Wednesday, September 8th at 8:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 9th at 10:15 a.m.
Blowing of the Shofar
at the Long Ridge School
Wednesday, September 8th at 8:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 9th at 10:15 a.m.
Blowing of the Shofar
YOM KIPPUR SERVICES
at the Long Ridge School
at the Long Ridge School
Friday, September 17th at 8:00 p.m.
Kol Nidre
Saturday, September 18th
Morning Service at 10:15 a.m.
Yizkor/Afternoon/Neilah at 4:30 p.m.
Kol Nidre
Saturday, September 18th
Morning Service at 10:15 a.m.
Yizkor/Afternoon/Neilah at 4:30 p.m.
Break Fast at 6:30 p.m.
FROM YOUR RABBI
A paramount theme of our Days of Awe worship is the petition that God inscribe us for blessing in His Book of Life. The Talmud in Tractate Rosh Hashanah portrays God as working with three fateful scrolls: one to receive the names of the thoroughly righteous, one for the thoroughly wicked, and one for those in between. The judgment of those in the latter is suspended during the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a period of time during which last-minute resolves of teshuvah (repentance), eleventh-hour words of tefilah (prayers for forgiveness), and heroic acts of tzedakah (righteousness) may avert the negative decree. We are portrayed in the ubiquitous Unetaneh Tokef as passing before God, one by one, for His judgment of life or death, and it is a judgment which each of us, respectively, has earned, for perforce each of us has signed our own warrant for good or for bad because our deeds constitute our signature. The ultimate signature: our deeds.
The ongoing assumption which operates in Rabbinical literature and therefore prominently in the Machzor (the prayerbook for the Days of Awe) is that the mortals of our acquaintance could not survive the judgment of justice alone; that is to say, each of us is too flawed and imperfect in our deeds to escape condemnation if right-and-wrong were the only standard. Therefore, on these days, we appeal to God's other side, as it were, His aspect of compassion. The verse from Jeremiah which concludes one of the haftarot for Rosh Hashanah and is also repeated in the traditional liturgy signals our hope in God's merciful love for us: "Truly, Ephraim [the Jewish people] is a dear son to Me, a child that is dandled! Whenever I have turned against him, my thoughts would dwell on him still; that is why My heart yearns for him; I will receive him back in love--declares the Eternal." Any human being who loves another, notably with the love of a parent for a child, will feel the resonance of these words. And so we hope for no less from the Creator of life and love.
What we do with all of this metaphor, of course, depends upon us. But there is one time and place where it is delivered up in the circle of co-religionists whose common calendar brings them together on the threshhold of a new year. What that year shall be and what we shall be in it has been ordained not simply by the Creative Force of the universe but also--Judaism asserts--by His human junior partners. We don't rent; we own. God is the bank; we are the mortgagors. We are not ultimately responsible, but we are responsible. Make the best of these last days and of the ten-day extension we have into the new year. It may well change our lives.
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