Parshat Ki Tavo
Ships or Sorrow?
Our parsha hosts the tochacha, the prediction/warning of how Hashem will punish Jews’ repeated abandonment of Torah study and observance. Among the threatened travails, we are told Hashem will return us to Egypt ba-oniyot, usually rendered “in ships,” a path Hashem had promised us we would never travel again.
R. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg points out Rashi adds we will be captives on those ships. Without his idea, the verse does not seem worrisome; what’s so bad about sailing on a cruise to Egypt? Unfortunately, the verse gives no indication of Rashi’s idea, when it would have been the main issue. That’s known (not that R. Mecklenburg says it) asikkar chaser min ha-sefer,the text left out the crucial point.
He suggests another reading, built based on Yeshayahu 3;26, ve-anu ve-avelu, and both Yeshayahu 29;2 and Eichah 2;5, where the phrase ta’aniyah va-aniyah appears. In all three, the root ani (with an aleph) means lamenting, moaning, or similar. Mechilta de-bei R. Yishmael aims towards the same idea when it claims the word hints at aniyut with an ayin, poverty.
Ha-Ketav Ve-Ha-Kabbalah had already offered a similar view in Shemot 11;4, he tells us, the plague of the first-born. Moshe reports Hashem’s announcement that ani will go out in Egypt at midnight. While most of us read it to mean Hashem is saying He Himself will “go out,” as it were, Onkelos took the first step away from the literal, to avoid ascribing physical movement to God, translated it, “I will be revealed.”
R. Mecklenburg instead there, too, read the rootanito refer to lamentation, takes the verse to mean at midnight, sadness will spread through Egypt.
[I’m not sure the grammar fits smoothly, but I’m no grammarian.]
Maybe ani doesn’t always mean I, and maybe the oniyot of the tochacha aren’t ships.
Righteousness Rewards Itself
Before the tochacha, Hashem lists the bounty we will receive should we observe the Torah properly. [It takes less time to list the blessings, and perhaps therefore they get lost in the length of the other side of the coin. I think the Torah worried Jews wouldn’t be daunted by the negatives unless there was great emphasis on them. As, sadly, they (and we) weren’t/aren’t.]
The phrasing of the blessings piques R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s interest, especially in 28;2, where the Torah says all these berachot “will come upon you... and catch you.” Proper observance, with the pure motive of serving God as God laid out, find us. Because we don’t look for the reward, says R. Hirsch, because we want only to fulfill God’s Will during our lives, enact that Will in the world, the good fortune will chase us and find us.
He takes the idea in a direction I’ve seen among other Jewish thinkers, too, yet many of us seem not to have absorbed. By keeping the ethical and social mitzvot, R. Hirsch says, our family and community lives will flourish; keeping the land, agriculture, and livestock mitzvot will lead to better outcomes in all those contexts. Our dedicated service of God has real-world impact.
For a final example I will cite, he says the Torah intentionally spoke of the blessing in the city before blessing in the fields. Many assume success in the fields, meaning economic success, is what enhances our lives in the city; the Torah wants us to know it is the reverse, our focus on acting ethically, personally and communally, will be the reason to see blessings in the fields.
[To emphasize it: so if we think making common cause with unethical people, who however seem to be successful, is the way to our own success, we are making a fundamental error. Our job is to do the right because it is right, to stay away from evil and evildoers, and God will work out the rest.]
For R. Hirsch, and many others, reward isn’t some external candy God gives us for being good boys and girls. It’s the way the world works, literally, that when we act well, as the Torah prescribed, and do it because it is what God told us to do, all the rest falls into place, better than we could put it there on our own.
From Imposed to Participatory Covenant
Beginning chapter twenty-seven, Moshe and the elders speak of the immediate reaction to crossing the Jordan. The Jews are to take large stones, cover them in limestone, write all the Torah on them, and more. Following the description, verses nine and ten have Moshe, the kohanim, and levi’im call for the Jews to listen/hearken to God’s Voice, and keep all the mitzvot. Malbim spots a change from what happened at Sinai.
Back in Shemot, God initiated the law-giving relationship, appeared to the people at Sinai with thunder, lightning, and the thick cloud, to instill in them/us the proper awe of Go. As Moshe said there, it was done to place God’s awe on our faces, a protection from sin.
In such an environment, the people actually only agreed to na’aseh, to fulfill, the commandments. Their famous “na’aseh ve-nishma, we will do and we will listen,” came only later (in Parshat Mishpatim), after they had heard the Ten Sayings at Sinai, and Moshe had read it to them from a book. When law is completely imposed, people have no interest in understanding, Malbim says, that interest developed only once they knew what they had been told, saw it goodness, were drawn in.
By our parsha, after many years of Moshe teaching Torah, the Jews’ excitement and enthusiasm had been sparked, they now wanted to accept all of Torah, of their own volition, and, more, sought to understand it deeply and sophisticatedly. Where before they were obedient children, doing what the “Parent” said because He said so, as it were, now they are more like subjects to a King, who want to plumb the King’s commands so as to perform them better. [It’s a picture of monarchy I think the democratic West has forgotten, but that’s not our topic here.]
When subjects interact with their monarch, their representatives are there, too, as part of the excitement over the relationship. Sinai was just Moshe, here it is Moshe and the Torah leaders of the people, who call for the people to shema, to hear and understand, then to observe and keep.
For Malbim, a sign of growth in the Jewish people of the desert.
The Continuing Joy of First Fruits
The parsha opens with how a farmer brings bikkurim, first fruits, to the Temple. To close the discussion, verse eleven says ve-samachta, you shall rejoice. R. David Tzvi Hoffmann tells us it means a meal, with eating of shelamim sacrifices, an idea derived by Yerushalmi Bikkurim 2;3 from a gezerah shavah.
He pauses to dispute Klosterman (I assume a Bible scholar of his time, although a quick search didn’t come up with anything). Klosterman thought the thanking of God for the Land would happen once, immediately after the Jews settled it.
R. Hoffmann chides him for failing to notice that verse two locates this ceremony in the “place God will choose’” a place we learned inDevarim12;10 would only be identified after Hashem had given us rest from all our surrounding enemies. More, Shemot 23;19 (“the choicest of your first fruits you shall bring to the house of Hashem”) makes this an annual obligation.
As should be our recognition of and joy in what God has given us, I think R. Hoffmann is saying. While the Jews need to know how much sorrow they can bring on themselves with poor choices, as R. Mecklenburg showed, our other commentators highlighted where and what can go well: the reward extending from our mitzvah observances, the growth in the Jews’ connection to God and Torah during their years of wandering, and the bikkurim ceremony to yearly express our gratitude for what God has given us.
