Posts Tagged 'Ki Tavo'

Fruit of Liberation

Published August 26, 2021 5.07 Ki Tavo 1 Comment
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At the start of Parshat Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion, we read about the Bikkurim offerings given in the Temple. There we read:

When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God will choose to establish God’s name. You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, “I acknowledge this day before the Lord your God that I have entered the land that the LORD swore to our fathers to assign us.” (Deuteronomy 26:1-3)

Bikkurim: First Fruits - Torah Insights - Parshah

While I am interested in the nature of the Temple ritual of giving these first fruit, I am even more interested that this Mitzvah is described to them while they were still in the wilderness. What would this message have meant to a nation of slaves who have never been in this land?

While they were slaves they had nothing. They did not own their time and it is not clear what kind of possessions they had. This is a powerful shift of mindset from one of scarcity to one of abundance. They were being asked to imagine a time when they would have what to offer and donate.

That being said it is still really hard to imagine conquering and building a country. It is easier to imagine the time when they will have settled down and you have their first fruit. Imaging that moment of expressing gratitude and making a small gift of fruit itself must have been liberating.

There is profound brilliance of the Rabbis to make these passages of Bikkurim the backbone of of the Passover Seder. For millennia we have been carrying on a conversation about liberation. The shift from scarcity to abundance is critical. But this itself might not be possible. People need smaller incremental wins to see progress and imagine a new reality.

It would have been too much for anyone to just say they had liberation for it to be true. We all need small baskets of progress that help us reflect on the fruit of our liberation.

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10,000 Hours or 40 Years

Published September 8, 2017 5.07 Ki Tavo Leave a Comment
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At the end of  Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion, we read:

And Moshe called all of Israel and said to them, “You have seen all that the Lord did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to all his land; the great trials which your very eyes beheld and those great signs and wonders. Yet until this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear. I led you through the desert for forty years [during which time] your garments did not wear out from upon you, nor did your shoes wear out from upon your feet. ( Deuteronomy 29: 1-4)

With all of the signs, wonders, and miracles that this generation saw how come it took them forty years to truly understand what God had done for them?

In reference to this passage the Gemara teaches:

 Yet Moses indicated this to the Israelites only after forty years had passed, as it is said, And I have led you forty years in the
wilderness . . . but the Lord has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see and ears to hear, unto this day.Said Raba: From this you can learn that it may take one forty years to know the mind of one’s master. (Avodah Zarah 5b)

Does it take forty years to really grok the wisdom of your master?

This reminded me of 10,000 Hours by Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis  in which he references Malcolm Gladwell‘s concept from his book Outliers that suggests that true mastery take 10,000 hours of work.

In their song they sing:

This is my world, this is my arena
The TV told me something different I didn’t believe it
I stand here in front of you today all because of an idea
I could be who I wanted if I could see my potential
And I know that one day I’mma be him

 Maybe the real idea being expressed in the Gemara in Avodah Zarah is not that it take forty years for you to understand your master, but it takes forty years for you to really get mastery over yourself. It takes a serious amount of effort, determination, and work for people to become the people that they aspire to be. Similarly our our Torah portion is saying that everyone is enslaved by their past and they need a serious amount of time, be it forty years or 10,000 hours to free yourself to be yourself. This is powerful message for Elul as we all consider doing Teshuva and investing in ourselves becomes our best selves.

 

Knowing Heart: Ki Tavo and Intuition

Published September 4, 2015 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Recently I was talking with a friend about Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion. She was helping her daughter write a Dvar Torah for her Bat Mitzvah. Her daughter was focusing on the idea at the end of the portion. There we read:

And Moshe called to all Israel, and said to them: You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;  the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and those great wonders; but the Lord has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.( Deuteronomy 29:1-3)

It is interesting in that the Torah is challenging the idea of intuition. What does it mean for the heart to know? On this Rashi says that it means “to recognize the kind acts of the Holy One, Blessed is God, and therefore to cleave to God”. What does it mean to cleave to God? In an age of fundamentalism I am very afraid of people doing acts of terrorism because of what they think they know in their hearts. I had not thought about it until looking more closely at this line, but what is the juxtaposition in this portion of the Torah. What does that mean for the heart to know as compared to the what the eyes see or what the ears hears?

This reminds me of the final chapter of Malcolm Gladwell‘s Blink. There he writes about how orchestras hold “blind” auditions where musicians literally play behind a screen. So-called expert judges are able to hear with “just their ears” rather than look first and, in that blink of an eye, make instant (often unfair) assumptions based on what they see. A tiny woman, for example, could never be a great French Horn player because she couldn’t possibly have the strength or lung capacity. Gladwell writes,“Until they listened to her with just their ears … they had no idea she was so good.”

It seems that good intuition is based on determining what is the right thing to focus in on and what is the right thing to ignore. The scary thing is how much people ignore of the world so that they can maintain their claim on what they know in their hearts. Coming of age at a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is really the beginning of a process of defining your own lens for how you will start to see and hear the world and determine how you will know things in your adult life.

-link to another piece on blink Blind Taste Test

 

 

Creating Memory – 9/11 for Another Generation

Published September 12, 2014 5.07 Ki Tavo Leave a Comment
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This week we commemorated the anniversary of 9/11. This was a transformational day for me personally. A the time of the event I was learning in yeshivah and living in Manhattan. There are so many memories I have from that time it is hard to imagine communicating them to someone who has not experienced it. I was shocked to realize that all of the Bnai Mitvah from now on were not even alive when 9/11 happened. I pause  to ask, how will we communicate the nature and gravity of this event to the next generation?

I was thinking about this when reading Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion. There we read about the ritual of Bikkurim, bringing the first fruit on Shavuot to the Temple. About this we read:

And you shall come to the priest that shall be in those days, and say to him: ‘I profess this day unto the Lord your God, that I am come unto the land which the Lord swore unto our fathers to give us.’ And the priest shall take the basket out of thy hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall speak and say before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians dealt ill with us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. And we cried unto the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, and our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders.  ( Deuteronom7 26:3-8 )

The generation who entered the land of Israel did not have first hand experience of the slavery and redemption in Egypt. This ritual was a means for this next generation to preserve a memory they never had. It is interesting that this ritual had a script. We learn later that in order to make the script more accessible the priest would say it and the person coming would repeat it.

We have a crises in being Jewish today. How will we share our memories with the next generation? I think we can point out a few things from the ritual of Bikkurim. Like the priest repeating the words,  we need to find ways to make it more accessible to more people. We need to build this difficult memory into something festive and not let the next generation get stuck in the gloom We also need to find the balance between the script that they need to say and the innovation. The next generation needs to find a way to breathe their own imagination into the ritual in order create their own memories around the ritual.

The script from this Bikkurim ritual is the foundation for the Hagadah. The Hagadah is the model of balance between tradition and innovation in order to keep memories vital throughout history.  In every generation we are to see ourselves as having been redeemed from slavery in our own Egypt. I would venture to say it is the most rewritten book in history. In order to get my children to connect to Jewish History  or even 9/11 I need to give them the space to explore what these events mean to them in their lives without the full burden of my understanding of history and what it means to me in my life. Rituals help preserve a dynamic tension between tradition and innovation. Without this tension we will break the chain linking our past to our future and our future to our past.

Taking Torah This Day

Published August 23, 2013 5.07 Ki Tavo Leave a Comment
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In the fourth aliyah of Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion, we read how Moses and the elders charged the people to set up large stones on Mount Ebal, coat them with plaster, and to inscribe on them all the words of the Torah as soon as they cross the Jordan River. There they are to build an altar to God made of stones on which no iron tool had struck, and they were to offer on it offerings to God and rejoice. At the end of the aliyah we read:

And you shall write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly. And Moses and the priests the Levites spoke to all Israel, saying: ‘Keep silence, and hear, O Israel; this day you have become people to the Lord your God. You shall therefore listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do God’s commandments and God’s statutes, which I command you this day.’ ( Deuteronomy 27: 8-10)

On this Rabbi Yehudah asked what is meant by  “this day” ( Berachot 63b).  Was it on that day that the Torah was given to Israel; was that day not at the end of the 40 years of the wandering in the Wilderness? Rabbi Yehudah explained that the words “this day” served to teach that every day the Torah is as beloved to those who study it as on the day when God gave it at Sinai. But why at this moment are we reminded of the revelation at Sinai?

When my brother was in medical school he shared with me how they were teaching him to become a doctor. He said, ” To learn a procedure we would see one, do one, and teach one.” Different people will learn at different stages. For some people if they see something they will learn it right away. For  others they need to practice it to master it. And everyone will have mastered the procedure if they are able to teach someone else how to do the procedure. It has stayed with me throughout the years that this is probably true in the case of all learning.

It was one thing for the nation to see revelation at Sinai. Making these stone pillars was enacting a commandment of the Torah. On another level making these pillars was a national expression of our teaching the Torah to the world. While we might have been given the Torah at Sinai, it was only when we entered into the land and built these pillars that we took the Torah. Rabbi Yehudah was right. Every day the Torah is as beloved to those who study it as on the day when the nation of Israel took the Torah of Israel  in the land.

Preparing a Clean Slate

Published September 7, 2012 5.07 Ki Tavo , 8.1.3 Yom Kippur Leave a Comment
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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

Look Who Is Talking

Published September 16, 2011 5.07 Ki Tavo 1 Comment
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In Ki Tavo, this week’s Torah portion, it records the laws we are to keep upon our entrance into the Promised Land. There we read;

It shall be on the day that you cross the Jordan to the Land that HaShem, your God, gives you, you shall set up great stones and you shall coat them with plaster. You shall inscribe on them all the words of the Torah, when you cross over, so that you may enter the Land that HaShem, your God, gives you. …” (Deuteronomy 27:2-3)

There are many questions we can ask about these stones. Are these stones built as a cause or an effect of their entering into the land?  And an even simpler question, which direction did these stones face? Were they facing the residence in the Land or their neighbors?

Reflecting on these questions I think about my daily commute into New York City. In my transit through Metro North and Grand Central Station I come into contact with hundreds if not thousands of people daily. As I am prone to do, I take note of what people decided to wear. What aspects of their identity are they choosing to disclose? Is what they are wearing a cause or effect of the places they are traveling, who they are, or who they want to appear to be? Many are wearing a symbol some variety or other. What do these symbols represent? Do they wear these things  for themselves to experience or for others to see?

There is no doubt that this consciousnesses is a product of my choice to wear a kipah. Regardless if we realize it or not we all are communicating with the people around us with the symbols of our lives. In that sense these messages are as much for our neighbors as for ourselves. It is what we tell people about ourselves which informs our aspirations for the people we hope to become. In turn these symbols help inform our habits.

These stones from this week’s Torah portion were as much billboards of the Torah on the banks of the Jordan as the t-shirt a freshman in college wears for his/her first day of college. Even if we are not about to erect a large stone monolith or a 9/11 memorial, we all could take a moment and think about the messages we send and make sure they line up with the people you want to become.

We could also explore how we communicate with the land itself. I found this piece, “The art of wearable communication” by Kate Hartman, to be very compelling.

While delightfully quirky, there is no doubt it takes this conversation about communication to the next level. Look who is talking now.

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