A Taste Of Eternity: Ki Tavo

A Taste Of Eternity:  Ki Tavo

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

September 21, 2016

The portion called Ki Tavo (“When You Arrive”, Deut. 26:1—29:8) begins with instructions that Moses gives the Israelites regarding their first harvest once they settle in the Land of Israel.

It isn’t the sacrifice part of these instructions that piques our interest.  Bringing offerings as a way of saying thanks to God is nothing new.  We’ve had the entire book of Leviticus to teach us that.  By this point, we know what we are doing.

Nor is it the command to bring “the first of the fruit of the ground.”  Again, we have had plenty of time to think about the value of “the first,” both to God and to us.  Indeed, seeing the first fruit of the season appear on a vine is nothing short of marvelous.  We plant a seed, we water and feed it; we watch the sprout appear, tiny and fragile, yet powerful enough to break through the soil and reach upwards to the sky.  We watch the plant grow, bud and flower, and then—a miracle happens!  As the flower dies, a luscious fruit replaces it. In our minds, we can almost taste the sweetness.

Taking some of the first fruit and dedicating it to God is of course a sign of gratitude for this wonderful gift.

Dayenu! It would have been enough! 

Yet what is truly amazing is the prayer that we are instructed to say when we bring this offering to God.  One of the oldest elements in our liturgy, the prayer is actually a review of our history.  In it we give thanks for what we have today and what we hope to have tomorrow, but additionally we also remind ourselves of the sorrows and difficulties that we encountered in the past.

אֲרַמִי אוֹבֵד אָבִי.  

It’s a text we may be familiar with:  “My forefather was a wandering Aramean.”  Another translation has it as “An Aramean tried to destroy my forefather.” The precise meaning could go either way, but the idea comes through clear enough: Our ancestors were wayfaring wanderers who often found themselves in danger for their lives.  The text then continues with a recounting of our slavery years in Egypt, the miracles and marvels of the Exodus, and finally our return to the Promised Land.  Throughout this journey, we had relied on God’s guidance, and we are now rewarded for our constancy and faithfulness.

So why repeat the story?  Who of us is not familiar with it, if not in a very personal way then through the stories we have heard our parents and grandparents tell and retell every Passover?

The first answer that immediately comes to mind is the common saying, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (a phrase actually coined in 1905 by the philosopher George Santayana).  Learning from the past is key to a better future, and learning from mistakes is the most effective way of doing it.

But recounting the past is more than just a lesson plan.  For humanity, memory is as close to eternity as we can get.  It’s through our memories that loved ones who have passed on still live; we carry on their legacy in our hearts and minds, and we carry it forward through our deeds every day.  In turn, what we share with our children today will form the basis for all of their tomorrows.

Yet there is even more to Ki Tavo than these lessons in history and humanity.

This section in the parasha comes sandwiched in between other episodes, passages of horror, fear and revulsion.  Laws that place moral boundaries to slavery remind us of unfair social and economic systems where some people become so destitute that they hand themselves—or worse yet, their children—over to cruel, uncaring masters.  Laws that regulate warfare and mandate how we must behave with prisoners of war remind us of the harshest realities of life.  Then there is that long list of curses that appears later in Ki Tavo and which contains nightmarish apparitions that are so horrifying that when we chant them at services, we do so quickly and in a barely-audible voice.  When we look at life’s realities this way, the present moment loses its blush all too soon, replaced instead by fear and dread.   

Yes, there are verses that promise wonderful rewards for those who lead a good life; but looking at life and seeing only its future potential also leaves us wanting.  Through this overly optimistic and yet equally unrealistic lens, life is all promise—but no fulfillment. We find ourselves forever chasing a vision, an elusive dream of justice and reward at some uncertain point in the future.  

But this view, too, leaves us unfulfilled.  The moment at hand is never complete in itself; it is always tarnished, always lacking something.  Looking at life this way we never learn to hold a precious moment in our hands, to appreciate it for what it truly is, a miracle that will never repeat itself. 

But this prayer, the prayer we are commanded to say when we bring forth our first fruit, offers us a different outlook on life. It teaches us to appreciate the moment as a blessed present in itself.

A ripe, juicy fruit is more than the sum total of all our toil and trouble.  As we bite into it, sweetness and delight fill our being. We are captivated by the beauty, fragrance and flavor that the moment has for us. And then, even as we forget the labor that made this miracle happen, we are filled with hope for the future. In fact, within this fruit lie dormant the seeds of any number of tomorrows. 

And so, holding up the fruit, we forgive the past, we give thanks for what we have today, and additionally we say a prayer for what has yet to be.  For we know that in our hands we are holding life, eternal in and of itself, past, present and future all at once.

The prayer of gratitude with which Parashat Ki Tavo opens teaches us to look at life not merely in its harsh and cold reality, nor as a rosy dream of what it can be but never really is.  It teaches us that every moment of life, every breath we take, contains within it not only what is, but also what was and what has yet to be, all rolled into one, unbroken, sacred portion of eternity.

As we enter this season of Holy Days, of new beginnings, of pardon and forgiveness, may we be blessed with the knowledge that every moment in our life is a precious gift for which we must always offer our gratitude and thanks.

Kein y’hi ratzon.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman

Lessons From Our Humanity: Parashat Shoftim

Lessons From Our Humanity:  Parashat Shoftim

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

The Torah is an ancient document, going back nearly three thousand years. Actually, anthropologists tell us that that’s not a very long time.  As a species, human beings have been around for much longer, and many civilizations have risen and fallen before Judaism appeared. Evidence of these long-gone cultures includes archeological ruins, art works, even some literature.  Additionally, however, there also exist fragments of law codes that once formed the basis of these ancient societies.  Some of these precede Moses’s Law by one thousand years or more.  Hammurabi’s Code, the most famous of these ancient law books, isn’t even the oldest, and it goes back to about 1754 BCE, a full thousand years before the appearance of the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy.

So what is it about Deuteronomy that takes one’s breath away?  It isn’t merely its age, nor the complete and finished state in which it has come down to us.  Of course, it is one of the Five Books of Moses, it is The Torah, and as such, it is both holy and fundamental to modern western civilization.  But those who look deeper into its contents and complexities can find much more in this book than just theology.

First there is the language.  The Hebrew of Deuteronomy is different from the first four books of the Torah:  It’s at once more poetic, more intricate, more exalted.  Additionally, however, Deuteronomy stands apart because of its generally secular topics, as well as for the depth and breadth of the material that it covers.

Whereas Genesis and Exodus tell magnificent and moving stories; and whereas Leviticus and Numbers delve into religious ritual and sacrifice, Deuteronomy is mostly about civil law.  True, faith is also an important element in this book.  After all, it is part of The Bible, and we do find in it a repetition of “the watchword of our faith,” as the Sh’ma used to be described in some prayerbooks.  The V’ahavta is repeated here too, as are the Ten Commandments. 

Yet on the whole, Deuteronomy is less about God and more about us.  It focuses less on our relationship with the Almighty, and much more on how we human beings should relate to one another. 

The true greatness of Deuteronomy lies in its understanding of human nature and in its lofty aspirations to build a fair, just and compassionate society—despite our more basic tendencies to be selfish, self serving and self absorbed.  As such, this important book is less a religious tome and more of an instruction manual in how to be a better person and how to build a Great Society.

By nature, human beings are builders. Civilizations have always defined their greatest achievements by their magnificent structures:  The cities and pyramids, the great arks and walls, and the skyscraping towers that they raised.  The Jewish contribution to this aspect of our humanity has been there since we first appeared.  Even as slaves in Egypt, we were recognized for our extraordinary ability to build great and complex structures and systems.  Joseph was not only a dreamer and interpreter of dreams; he was an engineer, an economist and an architect.  Almost singlehandedly he created a socio-political system that lasted half a millennium. In fact, the decline and fall of the ancient Egyptian empire followed in close order the rebellion and the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves. Simply stated, without its builders, the empire collapsed. 

But it wasn’t only buildings and storehouses that we Jews built.

Nation building was one of the first things the Hebrews engaged in once they entered the Promised Land.  Beyond building homes and cities, among the tasks the Israelites undertook were writing down their history and creating complex educational and legal systems.  Within a couple hundred years of crossing the Jordan River, the Israelites began erecting the Temple in Jerusalem and along with that, a whole religious, cultural and social system that, with the exception of one short break, lasted a thousand years.

The Torah is the manuscript that emerged from this early part of our history.  Part story, part philosophy, part theology, it is by far greater than the sum of its parts.  It represents an entire ethical and moral system based on historical events. Its teaching has survived cataclysmic events and kept its people together over miles and millennia.

Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book of the Torah, is thus an enormous building block, a foundation stone upon which not only Judaism, but indeed all modern civilization stands.

Shoftim, this week’s Torah portion, comes from this book (Deuteronomy 16:18—21:9).  The word Shoftim means “judges” or “magistrates” and underlies the understanding that a stable society must be founded upon justice.  “Justice, justice shall you pursue” reads the second verse of this portion, immediately following the injunction to set up a bribe-free, honest and fair court system.  Step by step, as the portion unfolds, it lays the blueprint for a society in which law brings order to chaos, where justice replaces vengeance, and where compassion overrides indifference. 

In the political entity that Shoftim envisions, not even the king is above the law—a revolutionary concept in ancient days, when the king was the law.  It wasn’t the meek who would inherit the land, nor the strongest and mightiest in the land, but rather the just.  In this exalted vision, expansion of borders would not be the result of military conquest, but rather the extension and spreading wide of an ideal system of morality and righteousness.

It’s a quixotic vision of the world not as it is, but rather as it should be.

The world that Shoftim prophesies teaches that kindness and compassion, fairness and justice are the most secure and lasting building blocks of civilization. 

In a post-9/11 world, this is a lesson everyone should take to heart.  Terror can cause suffering, destruction and pain; but it cannot topple a system based on justice.  Honoring God is important, but not more so than treating one another with dignity and respect.

Survival does mean, of course, that at times we must resort to self-defense, with all the hellish consequences that this entails.  But our endurance as human beings depends just as much—if not more—on the laws of this week’s portion, laws that form the most basic and eternal lessons of our humanity.

Over the next few days, as we meditate on the changes that 9/11 brought to our lives; as we recall the grief, the disbelief, and the outrage we felt that Tuesday morning 15 years ago; as we think about what still needs to be done to bring peace and wholeness to our planet; let us first offer a moment of silence and prayer on behalf of those whose lives were cut in mid-breath.  Let us think of the pain their families will carry with them for as long as they live.

But then let us remember that no act of terror will shake us if we hold on to the fundamental teachings that our civilization stands on. The laws of justice and compassion, of inclusiveness and dignity are what make us better people—and ultimately a stronger society than our adversary. These are the lessons of Parashat Shoftim. These are the lessons of our humanity.

Kein y’hi ratzon, may this be God’s will.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman