Ki Tavo

This week's parsha, Ki Tavo (When you enter into the Land), is one of the last parshas of Deuteronomy, in which Moshe, during the final days of his life, gives the Israelites a last batch of Mitzvahs, advice, exhortation, and blessing, before leaving them for good. In Ki Tavo, as in other portions in this group, Moshe makes reference to a specific day, who's identity and character is unclear. Towards the very end of the parsha, we read this: And Moshe called to all of the children of Israel and said to them: You all have seen all that God did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land. The great miracles which your eyes beheld, those signs and great wonders. And God did not give you a heart to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear; until today. What is meant by "until today"? What day, exactly, is Moshe referring to, and what happened on it? Here we are, approaching the end of the Torah, the end Moshe's life and the forty year trek through the desert; what specific day is this on which the Jewish people finally get "a heart to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear"? The Sforno, in a really pessimistic pshat, suggests that we read the verse like this: after all you saw in Egypt you still, even today, do not get it! "Until today", according to Sforno, should be read as "even today", "including today"; even now, after all this, you still don't get it. According to the Sforno, Moshe goes on to demand that now, after the experience of the desert, on the eve of entering the land of Israel, they better wise up, and understand what God wants of them and do it!  READ MORE »

Often, people ask me about the Biblical and Rabbinic roots of Zionism. Questions such as 'Is it a Mitzvah (commandment) to live in Israel?', or 'Haven't Jews always lived in the Diaspora, after all, the Babylonian Talmud, the textual cornerstone of Jewish life and law, was written in Babylon, wasn't it?, why is it important to live in Israel?', and 'Moses never even got to Israel, the Torah was given in the desert, lots of religious Jews live and have lived outside of Israel, right?', are asked all the time. Well, this week's parsha, Ki Tavo, opens with a section which, I believe, addresses these questions, and serves, therefore, as the foundation of religious Zionist thinking. The Jewish tradition considers these verses, and the concepts and sentiments contained within them, to be so important that it commands every Jewish farmer in Israel to read them every year, during a ritual which took place in the Temple at this time of year - in the summertime, between the Pilgrimage Festivals of Shavuot and Sukkot; the ritual of Bikkurim, the first fruits, in which every farmer in Israel is commanded to come every year to Jerusalem with the first fruits he has harvested of certain basic crops and present them as a gift to the priests in the Temple. The central element of the ritual is the speech, contained in these verses, which the farmer is commanded to make every year at this time. In addition to the reading of these verses by the farmer when he brings his bikkurim, and, of course, the annual reading of them as part of the weekly Torah portion, the Rabbis also included them as one of the central elements of the Hagadah, which we read every year at the Passover Seder. That's how much importance the Jewish tradition attaches to these "Zionist" verses. Let's take a look at them:  READ MORE »