At the start of Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion, we read, “And it shall be, when you come in to the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and do possess it, and dwell therein” ( Deuteronomy 26:1)With these opening words we are reminded where we were in the bigger story. A generation of slaves had escaped Egypt and went on to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai. Amidst their time in the desert they and their children are warned what they will need to do when they finally get into the Promised Land. While they were free in the desert, their ultimate autonomy will only be achieved when they are a free people in their own land (If you feel that you need to stop and sing Hatikvah I would not be upset). At this point in the story they are still in preparation. There we read:
1 And Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people, saying: ‘Keep all the commandments which I command you this day. 2 And it shall be on the day when you shall pass over the Jordan into the land which the Lord your God gives you, that you shall set up great stones, and plaster them with plaster. 3 And you shall write upon them all the words of this Torah, when you are passed over; that you may go in into the land which the Lord your God gives you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you.(Deuteronomy 27:1-3)
Slaves do not own their own property, children, time, or even their own narrative. It takes a certain power to be able to write your own history. In a profound way autonomy is bound up in the very idea of authorship. It seems fitting that these freed slaves write their narrative on these rocks when they enter the Promised Land. Not only is it empowering, it allows the People of the Book to frame the entire land of Israel in the context of their story.
Having their story be shared in public and in a permanent way is powerful, but we could easily overlook the media for the message. The very process of preparing these large rocks is a critical part of the story. They were instructed to take rocks and establish them as monuments. They had to take these rocks that would have been otherwise overlooked and prop them up. After doing this they needed to prepare them to be written on and only then could they write the Torah on them. This process seems to run paralleled to the very process of downtrodden slaves becoming free people. First they needed to be lifted up. Then they needed to be cleaned off and prepared to tell their own narrative. It is only after this process that they , the people and the rocks, are prepared to share the story.
In our Torah portion we read about the people waiting for the time when they will prepare these rocks to tell their story. In a deep way this also runs parallel to where we are now in the calendar. Elul represents a similar time when we need to pick ourselves up, start cleaning ourselves up in preparation for Tishrei. Yom Kippur, is the Day of Atonement during which we do Kaparah. Kaparah means to atone, but it also means to cover over. Similar to the large rocks that get a covering of plaster so we can write our collective story, Yom Kippur is a day on which we are freed from the slavery of our sins. It is on that day that our sins are covered over so we can write a new narrative for the coming year.
How are we preparing ourselves to have a clean slate? What story do we want to write this coming year?
We all have some work to do before we may be inscribed and sealed for a good year. Gmar Chatima Tova
